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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Other Books for Girls bt 

MARION AMES TAGGART 


Issued, by Doubleday, Page & Company 

THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE 

THE DAUGHTERS OF THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE 

Issued by Other Publishers 

THE WYNDHAM GIRLS 

MISS LOCHINVAR 

MISS LOCHINVAR’S RETURN 

NUT-BROWN JOAN 

DADDY’S DAUGHTERS 

PUSSY CAT TOWN 

THE NANCY BOOKS (Five volumes) 

SIX GIRL SERIES (Seven volumes) 

LOYAL BLUE AND ROYAL SCARLET 
HER DAUGHTER JEAN 
BETH’S WONDER WINTER 
BETH’S OLD HOME 





































































































































































































































































































































V 










































































NOT SUCH TALL, TALL GIRLS MY DAUGHTERS! ’ ” 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 

A Story for Girls 

BY 

MARION AMES TAGGART 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

FRANCES ROGERS 


/ 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1916 

tb 



Copyright , 1916 , fo/ 

Doubleday, Page & Company 

rights reserved, including that of 
translation into foreign languages , 
including the Scandinavian 



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© Cl, A 4 2 0 9 5 1 


Dedicated 
with love to 
Florence Ames 



I 








CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. “The Rosebud Garden of Girls” . . 3 

II. “Who Loves a Garden Loves a Green- 
house, too” 20 

III. “A Rosebud Set with Little Wilful 

Thorns” 37 

IV. “Home at Evening’s Close to Sweet 

Repast and Calm Repose” ... 57 

V. “Sweet as English Air Could Make 

Her” 75 

VI. “Something Between a Hindrance and 

a Help” 95 

VII. “ ’Tis Just Like a Summer Bird Cage in 

a Garden” Ill 

VIII. “And Add to These Retired Leisure, 

That in Trim Gardens Takes His 
Pleasure ” 129 

IX. “Whose Yesterdays Look Backward 

with a Smile” 146 

X. “ ’Tis Beauty Calls and Glory Shows 

the Way” 165 

XI. “He Nothing Common Did or Mean” . 183 

XII. “And Learn the Luxury of Doing 

Good” 199 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


viii 

CHAPTER 

XIII. “ Wise to Resolve and Patient to Per- 

FORM ” . 215 

XIV. “Our Acts Our Angels Are, or Good 

or III” 233 

XV. “Fragrant the Fertile Earth After 

Soft Showers” 250 

XVI. “Implores the Passing Tribute of a 

Sigh ” 267 

XVII. “ Rich with the Spoils of Nature ” . . 285 

XVIII. “And Feel That I Am Happier Than I 

Know” 302 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

“ ‘ Not such tall, tall girls, my daughters! ’ ” Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

“ ‘ What time do you think the perfesh, which stop 

here, rises ? ’ ” 44 

“ ‘ Mary, this is Wilfrid Willoughby who drives 
splendidly, and is going to look after us this 
summer.’ ” 174 

“ Those who knew her best were amazed and a little 

startled ” 240 









HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


CHAPTER ONE 


“the rosebud garden of girls” 

Mary, Jane, and Florimel — these were the 
three Garden girls. Mary, Jane said, “looked 
it.” She was seventeen, broad and low of brow, 
with brown hair softly shading it, brown eyes, 
as warm and trusty as a dog’s, looking straight 
out upon a friendly world from under straight 
brows and long brown lashes; a mouth that 
might have been too large if it had not been so 
sweet that there could not be too much of its 
full rosy flexibility. She had white, strong teeth 
and a clean-cut, reliable sort of nose, a boyish 
squareness of chin, and clear wholesome tints of 
white, underlaid with red, in her skin. She was 
somewhat above medium height and moved with 
a fine healthy rhythm, like one thinking of her 
destination and not of how she looked getting to 
it. Last of all, she had wonderfully beautiful 
hands, not small, but perfectly modelled, capable, 
kind, healing hands which, young as they were, 
had the motherly look that cannot be described, 

3 


4 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


yet is easily recognizable, the kind of hand that 
looks as if it were made expressly to support and 
pat baby shoulders. 

Jane was quite right: Mary Garden did “look 
like a Mary.” 

Jane herself, at fifteen, did not in the least 
suggest her name. She was small, slender, if one 
were polite, “thin” if not. She had red hair 
of the most glorious, burnished, brilliant red, 
masses of it, and it was not coarse, like much of 
the red hair, but fine and uncontrollable. It 
glowed and rose and flew above and around 
Jane’s startlingly white face till it might have 
been the fire around the head of an awakened 
Briinhilde. No one could have said positively 
what colour her eyes were. They possessed life 
rather than tint. They flashed and dreamed, 
laughed and gloomed under their arching brows 
of red gold, through their red-gold lashes, with 
much of the colour of her hair in them. Her face 
was long, with a pointed chin and a delicate little 
nose; its thin nostrils quick to quiver with her 
quickened breath. Her upper lip was so short 
that her small, even teeth always showed; her 
mouth was sensitive, not to say melancholy. 
Her neck was long and slender and swan-white. 
Her shoulders sloped; she was not more than 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


5 


five feet tall; her hands were long and thin, quick 
and fluttering, like her lips. Altogether Jane 
was exactly the opposite of her prim, old-time 
name. 

These two Garden girls had received Garden 
names from their father and his family. He 
had been Doctor Elias Garden, doctor of letters 
and physics, not of medicine; a grave man, de- 
voted to study, old of his age, and that age 
twelve years more than his wife’s, to whom he 
had left his three little girls, when Mary was four 
years old, by dying untimely. 

The third child this girl- wife had named. 
The mother was but twenty-four, and she was 
understood to have been fond of sentiment and 
the ornamental; she named her baby Florimel, out 
of Spenser’s “Fairy Queen.” This proved to be 
a misfit name even more than Jane’s. Florimel 
was a dark little witch, black-haired, black-eyed, 
white of skin, with red cheeks and red lips, a 
tomboy when she was small, an absolute genius 
at mischief as she grew older, devoid of the least 
love of the sentimental. She whistled like the 
blackbird Mary called her, climbed trees, fell 
out of them, tore dresses, bruised flesh, got into 
scrapes, but also out of them, through her im- 
petuosity. She was a firebrand in temper, yet 


6 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


easily moved to pity, exceedingly loyal and lov- 
ing to those she loved, seeing no virtues in those 
she disliked. Thus she had stormed her way 
up to her thirteen years, a problem to manage, 
except that she adored Mary so much that she 
could not long grieve her, and was so true and 
affectionate that she was sure to come out right 
in the end. 

Young as they were, the Garden girls were 
three distinct types, each beautiful. Mary 
least could claim actual beauty, perhaps, yet she 
was the loveliest of the three. Jane and Florimel 
were creatures for an artist to rave over; Mary 
was the type that men and women and angels 
love. When Florimel was a year old their 
mother had left them. She was English, an 
artist of some sort, they knew, and she had 
elected to respond to the call of her art, and had 
gone to England, leaving her children to the more 
than efficient guardianship of the Garden rela- 
tives, their legally appointed guardian, Mr. 
Austin Moulton, their father’s friend, and the 
devotion of Anne Kennington, the housekeeper, 
nurse — everything. It would have been hard 
to define Anne Kennington’s position in the 
Garden household, as it would have been hard to 
do justice to the way she filled it. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


7 


The girls had never thought much about their 
mother. The Gardens had been too well-bred 
to decry her to her children, but they had gath- 
ered the impression that she “did not amount 
to much,” a fearful indictment from a Garden! 
Mary had silently felt, in a hurt way, that she 
could never have left three little girls, no matter 
to whom, and she had not talked about their 
mother, even to her sisters. As time went on, 
without being told so, the Garden girls came to 
imagine that their mother was dead. This im- 
pression of one whom only Mary remembered 
vaguely could not sadden them. They were 
motherless; but, though they envied girls with 
loving fathers and mothers, they had a great 
deal. Each in her way, the three Garden girls 
were philosophers and did not imagine they were 
unhappy when they were not, since no life holds 
every form of good. 

They had the solid, fine old house; Win Garden, 
Winchester, their father’s half-brother, only 
twenty-four years old, so big-brotlierly that it 
was silly to call him uncle, and they never did; 
and the Garden. The square house of pressed 
brick stood in a garden, a great, old-fashioned 
garden, blooming around it, as the house bloomed 
amid it, with its rosebud girls. Sometimes the 


8 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Garden girls thought the garden was their chief 
earthly good; certainly it was their chief joy. 
With it and one another little else was needed 
for companionship. 

Now, in May, the lilacs blossomed and the irises 
were beginning, the herald shrubs were announc- 
ing themselves vanguards of the flower-beds. 
Many of these were filled with perennials, grow- 
ing taller, more luxuriant each year, thanks to 
the care they got, chief of them all the tall holly- 
hocks which illumined the garden on all sides. 
The hollyhocks were so many and so magnificent 
that they gave their name to the Garden house. 
It was known as Hollyhock House to all the 
countryside. Other beds were left for seeds 
of swift-growing annuals; each Garden girl had 
two of these beds for her own planting and, when 
they flowered, one could have accurately named 
their owners. Even meteoric Florimel did not 
neglect her flowers. 

Jane was singing in the sunshine as she cut 
sprays of white lilac. She looked like a sunray 
clad in flesh, with the sunshine on her magnificent 
hair, and her slender body pulsating with song, 
as a ray of light quivers in the air. 

Mary looked up from her aster seedlings which 
she was thinning. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


9 


“You look as though you were going to fly 
away, Janie Goldilocks !” she cried, dropping 
back on her heels to regard Jane. Mary was 
always discovering her sister anew. 

“Wish I could!” cried Jane. “Fly right up 
like a spark — my hair is red enough! And be a 
spark that wouldn’t cool in the air, but keep on 
and on ! Over the Himalayas ! ” she added as an 
afterthought; that sounded magnificently dis- 
tant, big and vague. 

“Over the home layers would do for me — the 
chicken house!” laughed Mary. 

“My voice goes up and up; it’s part of me, yet, 
when it is up, it is no longer a part of me,” said 
Jane. “I’m here, my feet on the ground, and 
I can send my voice skyward, and it is mine, me, 
and not me. It goes very, very high ” 

“I noticed it,” said Mary. Indeed Janie’s 
singing had mounted to the treetops, an arrow 
of sound, sharp, clear, yet never shrill. 

“You old nuisance!” cried Jane. “Why 
don’t you ever want to fly? And why do you 
sing in that purring alto, just like yourself? I 
want to jump over the moon and sing to C above 
high C! It’s just because you’ve brown hair!” 

“I don’t know,” suggested Mary. “It was 
the cow who jumped over the moon, and cows 


10 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


are supposed to be calm folk. Maybe she was a 
red cow though; Mother Goose forgot her com- 
plexion.” 

“She ought to have been an Ayreshire cow, 
going up in the air like that.” Janie rippled 
with laughter over this discovery. “Never 
mind, Molly Bawn; I’d soon fly back again, if I 
flew away from you, and I don’t believe if I flew 
to the hanging gardens of Babylon I’d be happy 
to hang in them, away from the Garden garden, 
long!” 

“Of course you wouldn’t!” agreed Mary 
promptly. “We both know there’s no place 
like home, but I settle down knowing it, and you 
keep fermenting like yeast ! That’s what I don’t 
understand.” 

“Wine sounds nicer than yeast and ferments 
just as much,” Jane reproached her. “Yeast 
is gray and ugly and smelly; grape juice ferment- 
ing is lovely. I can’t help being fizzy! Fuzzy, 
too, and red-haired ! But I’d never fly far from 
you, Mary blessing.” And Jane ran over to hug 
Mary till she toppled her over. They both 
laughed, and returned to their flowers, one cut- 
ting, the other transplanting. Jane resumed her 
singing, her voice soaring high in “ I love the name 
of Mary,” transposed to an unreasonable key. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


11 


“ I ought to have been the soprano Garden, 
with my name,” said Mary. “I’ve the prima 
donna name and the secunda donna voice — no, 
the tertia donna voice — such as it is! The alto 
isn’t even the second lady of the opera, is she?” 

“I don’t know! What in all this world is all 
this learned Latiny sounding count you’re trying ! 
We’ve always called you our Opera Star, Mary 
Garden, haven’t we? I know what the prima 
donna is, but I don’t know what your secunda 
and tertia — oh, I see ! Prima is first — yes, I see ! 
You’re not much like an opera Mary Garden, I 
suppose, but you can sing! I love your voice — 
just like a lovely cat that’s had plenty of cream, 
purring all contented on a cushion! Soft and 
true and sweet; that’s your voice, little Mary 
Garden — even if you’re not big Mary Garden!” 

“ Well, Jane!” cried Mary, when Jane paused. 
“A cat purring, after cream! But it isn’t as 
though I thought anything about singing. What 
are we trying to get at? I never even think of 
singing. I see Win coming out of the house, and 
I hear Florimel talking like mad. I wonder 
what it is, now!” 

“Goodness knows!” sighed Jane, as if any- 
thing might be expected of their youngest — as 
indeed it might! 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


12 

Winchester Garden, the young half-uncle who 
seemed like a whole brother to the young girls, 
came down the central path of the garden to 
join Mary and Jane. He was good to look at, 
lean, but not thin, muscular, with a swinging 
easy walk; he had a smooth-shaven, humorous 
face, with keen, yet kindly eyes which twinkled 
in a way that matched a certain laughing twist 
of his lips. He was tall and his colouring was har- 
monious, hair, eyes, and skin all of a brownish 
tint. 

“Hallo, little nieces! Hallo, little races!” 
he called, correcting himself. 

“Hallo, Win, the winner!” Jane shouted back. 
“Methinks I hear Florimel — lifluous,” said Win. 

Mary laughed; Jane did not know what the 
word meant. 

“Nothing particularly mellifluous about Flori- 
mel’s voice just now,” she said. 

Somewhere beyond the fence arose Florimel’s 
voice. “Come along!” it was saying sharply. 
“Do you think I can drag you! Big as you are? 
Even if I knew you wouldn’t bite! Come on!” 
This more encouragingly. “If you only won’t 
be shy,” they heard her add in a tone of exas- 
perated patience, “I’m sure my sisters will be 
glad to see you, and some one will help you out. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 13 

probably our guardian, Mr. Austin Moulton. 
He can do ’most anything of that sort.” 

“ Well, what on earth do you suppose the kid 
has in tow, now, that requires such an assorted 
exhortation?” murmured Win. 

Florimel appeared at the wicket gate which 
admitted to the garden from the street at the 
rear of the Garden place. But above her, over 
the hedge, arose another head, some ten inches 
higher than FlorimeFs dark one, the fair head of 
a boy about eighteen. His face was pale, his 
expression troubled, his eyes seemed to ask for 
pardon for his intrusion, but he was there. It 
was only when he followed Florimel through the 
gate, at her vehement invitation, that one saw 
that he limped. 

Florimel was rosy from earnest and strenuous 
effort; her brilliant face was fairly scintillating 
with excitement, her dark eyes snapping. The 
reason for what Win had called her “ as- 
sorted exhortation” was revealed by the presence 
of the lame boy and of a dog which she was gin- 
gerly, yet forcibly, conducting by any part 
available for seizure, there being no collar by 
which to lead her. It was a dog of varied an- 
cestry, setter and hound predominating. On a 
groundwork of white a large liver-coloured spot, 


14 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


like a stray buckwheat cake, was displayed on 
one side, and a large liver-coloured spot, with a 
smaller one just below it, giving the effect of the 
print of the sole and heel of a muddy and large 
shoe, decorated the dog’s other side. The liver 
and white tail which she cheerfully waved was 
too broad and thick successfully to carry out its 
design; so was the body too unevenly developed 
for beauty. But the head was really beautiful, 
with long liver-coloured ears, soft and fine, carry- 
ing out the liver-coloured sides of the face, di- 
vided by a broad white parting from crown to 
tip of nose. The brown eyes looking out from 
this fine head were the softest, loveliest of dogs’ 
eyes 1 — and there can be nothing more said in 
praise of eyes than this. 

“It’s homeless!” Florimel announced breath- 
lessly. “It hasn’t any home. It’s been hang- 
ing around the hotel and they won’t feed it for 
fear it will keep on hanging around. Amy 
Everett and I found them driving it off* — with 
brooms!” Florimel’s voice conveyed that this 
weapon was of all the most unpardonable. “I 
grabbed its hair— they said ’twould bite, but it 
never would! And I pulled its ears— they’re as 
soft ! And it licked my nose before I could jump. 
So I’m going to keep her — please! We need a 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


15 


dog, really. It is a peach; only a puppy, about 
six months old ; they said so at the hotel. People 
had it and dropped it — didn’t want it. Isn’t it 
perfectly fiendish the way they do that to cats 
and dogs? So I want her. Don’t shake your 
head, Winchester Garden; I — want — this- — 
dog!” 

Mary, Jane, and Win had been following this 
eloquence with various degrees of embarrass- 
ment, for while Florimel introduced the dog she 
made no allusion to the boy, whom some people, 
less animal lovers than Florimel, might have 
thought should have been first introduced. He 
stood patiently awaiting his turn while Florimel 
talked. But, after all, this was less a misfortune 
than it seemed, for it was absurd enough to make 
him laugh, and this put him slightly more at ease, 
besides recalling Florimel to her duty. 

“My sakes, I forgot!” she cried, but not in the 
least contrite. “I met this — this — — Are you 
a gentleman or a boy?” she demanded. 

This sent all four of her hearers into a burst of 
laughter, and laughter is a good master of cere- 
monies, abolishing ceremonial. 

“I hope to be a gentleman soon; in the mean- 
time I’d like to be considered a gentlemanly 
boy,” said the stranger. His voice and manner 


16 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


of speaking warranted his hope. “ I am eighteen. 
I guess I’m still a boy. My name is Mark Wal- 
pole. I came to this town because I heard that 
there was a chance here for employment, but the 
place I was after is filled. I’ve had rather a set- 
back starting out in life. My mother has been 
dead some years. There was a fire. It de- 
stroyed our house, and my father was — he died 
in it. It seems he left nothing behind him; we 
had been considered rather well-to-do. I’m 
afraid his step-brother got the best of him. He 
showed he hated me, and that may have been 
because he had wronged us. People thought so. 
He held the land where the house had been, and 
there wasn’t any money. I had to start out; of 
course I wanted to. I couldn’t have breathed 
in that town — this all happened in Massachu- 
setts. So I’m seeking my fortune. This little 
girl seems to be in the rescue line to-day. She 
heard me ask for work; she was struggling along 
with this dog. So she annexed me, too! She 
seemed to think she knew some one who was sigh- 
ing for a chance to start me. I didn’t want to 
come here with her, but we couldn’t seem to 
help it — neither the dog nor I!” The young 
fellow stopped and smiled at Florimel, with a 
glance at the others. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 17 

“Yes, that’s Florimel!” cried Mary, with con- 
viction. “She sweeps all before her.” 

“She’s a six-cylinder, seventy-five horse- 
power,” added Win. “But she’s all right — 
except when she’s all wrong! This time she’s 
dead right. We’re glad you came. Come into 
the house; there’s supper soon, eh, Mary?” 

“Indeed there is, a good one!” cried Mary, 
jumping to her feet. “Of course Florimel was 
right, and we are glad you came! Please don’t 
seem to be going to refuse to stay, because 
you must stay, anyway! We love to have 
company!” 

“We get dreadfully tired of just ourselves,” 
added Jane, though this was an exaggeration of 
her own occasional moods. “We’re awfully 
glad you came. This is Hollyhock House, we 
are the Garden girls — Mary, Florimel, Jane.” 
She touched her own breast with her thumb bent 
backward. 

“Winchester Garden,” added Win, with a bow. 
“ I’m Jane’s uncle, but not worth her introducing. 
It’s pretty tough to have such disrespectful 
nieces! I’m their father’s half-brother. I’m 
afraid they are all trying to be sisters to me, not 
nieces. I know they are trying , if that’s all! 
Awful trials! Come up with me to my room 


18 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


and let’s wash up for supper. You said your 
name was Mark; sure it isn’t Maud? Wish it 
were!” 

“Why?” asked the guest, evidently both 
alarmed and pleased by this cordiality. 

“We never catch a Maud. We want to say: 
‘Come into the Garden, Maud’ — either this nice 
old garden, or the Garden house — but no one 
turns up to fit! Come into the house, anyway. 
Mark is within three letters — two — of being 
Maud.” 

And Win laid his hand on the lame lad’s 
shoulder, with great kindness underneath his 
nonsense, and bore him away in triumph. As 
he went the girls heard him saying: “We fit our 
Tennyson in one way: we’ve a rosebud garden 
of girls, three of ’em.” 

“Take the dog around to Abbie, and ask her 
to feed her and make a place in the woodhouse 
for her to sleep. She must stay to-night, any- 
way,” said Mary. “Then hurry to get yourself 
ready for supper, Florimel; you’re covered with 
white hair and dogginess!” 

“Good thing to be covered with,” said Flori- 
mel. “What’ll we call the dog, Janie?” 

“I was thinking; Chum is a nice name for a 
dog,” said Jane. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


19 


“It’s a fine name!” cried Mary. 

And Florimel saw that her dog was safe. “ But 
I knew you’d love her, you darling things!” she 
cried, as she tore off, with her large and cheerful 
outcast rushing after her. 


CHAPTER TWO 


“who loves a garden loves 

A GREENHOUSE, TOO ” 

“We call our house a greenhouse, though it is 
made of red brick, because it grew all the Gar- 
dens,” explained Mary, when Win brought their 
unexpected guest down to supper. 

The boy was less pale for a vigorous towelling, 
but he looked uncomfortable, like one who could 
neither account for his being there nor feel that 
he ought to be there. Mary saw at a glance that 
Win had adopted him without reservation during 
their absence. Win was a most definite person 
toward his acquaintances; one was never in 
doubt as to his attitude toward them. He 
loved, or he loved them not, and one never had to 
have recourse to a daisy to find out which it was. 
He kept his hand on the lame lad’s shoulder, as 
he entered the dining-room, and smiled at him 
with peculiar kindness. 

“Yes, we consider that a subtle bit of clever- 
ness!” Win supplemented Mary. “The house 
20 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


21 


is a greenhouse for growing the Garden roses — 
see?” He waved his hand toward Mary and 
Jane. “It has grown other Garden plants, for 
that matter. My grandfather, the girls’ great- 
grandfather, built it, and it was owned by my 
father, and then by my elder brother, their 
father. T was born in it; so were they. It went 
to two oldest sons; then that last one had nothing 
but three worthless girls to leave it to!” Win 
scowled fearfully at them. 

“It’s a dandy house,” said the stranger, look- 
ing around him. 

It really was ! The hall ran through the mid- 
dle of it, with big rooms on either hand and win- 
dows catching the sun’s rays in turn, as the solid 
house was swung around him. The dining-room 
got the last of the daylight, facing westward as 
it did. A glowing sunset lighted up the round 
mahogany table, in the centre of the room, and 
its snowy damask, brilliant glass, and silver. 
Fine old steel engravings of Landseer’s pictures 
hung around the wall; the chairs were solid, high 
of back. The room gave an effect of cheer, and 
space, and plenty. 

“I feel horribly uncomfortable, intruding,” 
said the guest, looking with convincing ap- 
peal and a flushed face at the girls. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


22 

“I don’t think you could call it intruding to 
stay when you are urged to — and wanted — do 
you?” asked Mary. 

“My only fear is there mayn’t be enough to 
eat!” said Win. 

“There is, then!” declared a new voice, and 
they all turned to see Abbie Abbott, bringing in 
a tray with creamed chicken garnished with pars- 
ley, and a steaming plate piled with flaky biscuits. 
Abbie might have been almost any age between 
twenty-five and sixty-five ; in reality she was half- 
way between those two ages, and a character. 

“You’ve enough to feed six delegates to a 
convention — and they’re the hungriest things I 
ever come across, Mr. Win! Mr. Moulton and 
Mis’ Moulton called on the phome and said 
they’d be over to-night,” added Abbie. 

“ We always say Mr. and Mrs. Moulton called,’* 
remarked Jane, as Abbie disappeared. “You 
don’t speak of every one together as you do them. 
I wonder why!” 

“And you don’t hear people calling over the 
‘ phome ’ unless you happen to be Abbie Abbott,” 
added Win. “Sounds like a sea song. 

“I heard a voice across the foam: 

To-night I’ll tread the Garden loam; 

Helm hard a-lee, I’m sailing home!” 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


23 


“Win, you ridiculous fellow!” cried Mary, 
with her merry laugh. 

Jane ran to him and shook him approvingly; 
Jane could never approve heartily without 
violence. “You lovely idiot!” she cried. 

Florimel dashed into the room and collided 
with Abbie bringing Saratoga chips and tomatoes. 
“Oh, gracious!” cried Florimel, dropping into a 
chair. 

“You may well say so!” said Abbie sternly, as 
she skilfully saved her burden from wreck. 
“Good thing it wasn’t next trip, with the coffee- 
pot steaming hot and the diddly cream jug!” 

“Now we are all here; we don’t have to wait 
any longer,” announced Mary, with evident re- 
lief. “Grubbing in the garden makes me hun- 
gry*” 

“Let me wait on Mr. Walpole, because I 
found him; Chum was starving,” said Florimel, 
and they all laughed. 

“So am I,” said the guest, accepting the skip- 
ping Saratoga potatoes which Florimel aimed at 
his plate, or as many of them as arrived there. 
“But my name is Mark.” 

“Nice, handy one, too; can’t be shortened,” 
said Win. “We’ll all be first-name friends from 
now on. I’m the oldest of the lot and I’m only 


24 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


six years older than Mark. What’s your spe- 
cialty, Mark? Any special work you’re after?” 

“ Paying work,” said Mark, with a laugh. “I 
did intend to study a good while longer. I’m 
not prepared for any special work; not ready 
for it, I’m afraid, but it has to be found, if it’s 
wrapping grocery parcels. I’d like to work with 
a botanist; I know more about botany than any- 
thing else.” 

“And Mr. Moulton is botany crazy, in an ama- 
teurish way!” cried Mary. 

“I wonder how a person is an amateur lunatic,” 
murmured Jane. 

“Now, who’d expect you, of all people, to ask 
that, Jane?” said Win suggestively. “Mr. 
Moulton is at work on a tremendous book, more 
tremendous than it will ever be book, I’m afraid. 
He’ll never finish it! ‘A Study of the Flora of 
New York,’ he calls it, and he’s making a her- 
barium as big as the book. Maybe he’d take 
you to help on it.” 

“If I could do it,” said Mark doubtfully. 

“If nobody can possibly eat another bite, nor 
drink another drop, suppose we go out and watch 
the stars come out, and wait for Mr. and Mrs. 
Moulton to come over,” suggested Mary. 

“If it was anybody else, or we were anybody 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


25 


else,” said Florimel, “and Mr. and Mrs. Moul- 
ton was their guardian — Mr. Moulton, really, 
but Mrs. Moulton does more guarding than he 
does — we’d call them Uncle Austin and Aunt 
Althea, but we never do. Mr. and Mrs. to them 
means just as much as uncle and aunt do when 
other girls say it to people who aren’t any rela- 
tion. Mr. and Mrs. Moulton like us to call 
them what they really are; not relations, when 
they’re not.” 

Mark laughed, and Win said: “Strain that, 
kiddums, to clear your remarks. They’re badly 
mixed.” 

Mary explained to Mark: “Florimel means 
that we never fell into the way of calling people 
who weren’t related to us uncle and aunt, but 
Mr. Moulton and Mrs. Moulton are two of our 
cornerstones. I do wish Mr. Moulton would let 
you help him. Very likely his book will never 
be published, but I’m sure it’s fine, and as inter- 
esting as it can be to work on. Mr. Moulton 
would be so happy if a young person were work- 
ing with him. All we can do is listen when he 
tells us about it, or reads us bits, but he knows 
quite well that we don’t understand anymore 
about the scientific part of it than a telephone 
receiver would, and that must be discouraging.” 


26 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“I don’t know what your Mr. Moulton would 
want of me, but I’d be glad enough if he could 
use me. You see I meant to go on studying, go 
to college and specialize and maybe teach, and 
do something- worth doing in botany. But 
that’s knocked on the head.” Mark tried to 
speak carelessly, but the tang of disappointment 
was in his voice. 

“No telling which is the short cut to your 
destination when you’re young and all roads 
stretch out before you, my son,” said Win, an- 
swering this note in the younger lad’s voice and 
laying a hand on his shoulder with a mock pa- 
ternal air. “ Come on outside, and take a course 
in botany and astronomy, sitting in our garden 
watching the stars come out.” 

“Just a moment. Win,” murmured Mary. 
She laid a detaining hand on Win’s arm, and 
Mark followed Jane and Florimel through the 
door that led directly into the garden from the 
dining-room. 

“Aren’t we to keep him overnight?” Mary 
asked. “It may be he hasn’t much money for 
lodgings, and morning seems the right time to set 
out.” 

“Why, of course, Lady Bountiful,” Win con- 
curred heartily. “Sure thing we’re going to 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


27 


keep him to-night ! He’s a mighty nice little chap, 
if he is out seeking his fortune, and Florimel did 
pick him up — like the dog!” 

“He’s very nice,” Mary agreed. “He has 
lived among nice people. But he isn’t a little 
chap, Win; he’s taller than you are.” 

“ What are inches? ” demanded Win. “ When 
you are twenty-four, my child, you will under- 
stand that eighteen is mere infancy.” 

“In fancy! Yes, it is!” cried Mary saucily. 
“In reality twenty-four is nothingness.” 

“Disrespectful to your uncle! Bringing his 
dark hairs in sorrow to the gray!” growled Win, 
stalking after the others to the garden. 

Mary ran out to look for Anne, whom she knew 
she should find at that hour helping Abbie get 
the supper dishes out of the way. 

“Anne, Anne dear, Anne Kennington!” she 
called as she came. 

“Mary, lass, what is it?” Anne answered, 
coming to meet her. 

She was a tall Englishwoman of about thirty- 
five, with the brightness of her youthful brilliant 
colouring beginning to fade. The red in her 
cheeks was hardening as the whiteness around 
it browned, but her eyes still flashed fires out of 
their depth of blue, and her hair was almost 


28 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


black. She moved with a free, indifferent swing 
as if she had been born under the Declaration of 
Independence instead of the English queen. 
But her devotion to the Garden girls partook 
of the loyalty of a subject, while it was, at the 
same time, all maternal. 

“We have a guest for the night, a nice boy a 
year older than I am, who came to Vineclad 
looking for work. Florimel met him and brought 
him home with her to see Mr. Moulton. Is the 
little room in order?” asked Mary. 

“Little room, and big room, and middle-sized 
room, all the guest-rooms are in order,” said 
Anne, resenting the question. “But staying 
the night here, Mary? A tramp ! ” 

“Mercy, no! A gentleman and very really!” 
Mary set her right. “His home was burned, his 
father was killed in the fire, and, instead of being 
left well-off, he had nothing. He is from Massa- 
chusetts, he didn’t say where; his name is Mark 
Walpole. Win thinks he is fine — it isn’t merely 
girls’ judgment.” 

“And Winchester Garden is only a big boy; 
what does he know of reading character? Though 
he would be a good judge of breeding,” Anne 
conceded. “I suppose a night of him won’t 
ruin the place, though what with Florimel 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


29 


bringing home that dog and now a boy, there’s 
no telling what the end will be! Of course I 
knew he was at supper; he looks a nice sort; I’ll 
grant him that. Go on, Mary; Mr. and Mrs. 
Moulton are this minute crossing over. I’ll 
see that the ewer is filled in the boy’s room, and 
more than that it doesn’t need done to it; that, 
and a pair of towels.” 

“There’s no housekeeper like our Anne! 
You can’t catch her napping,” laughed Mary, 
hastening out to help receive her guardian and 
his wife. 

The Garden girls and their absurdly un- 
uncle-fied young uncle had a habit of sitting out 
in their garden in the evening from such an early 
date in the spring that everybody croaked 
“malaria,” till so late a date in the autumn that, 
figuratively speaking, the neighbourhood clothed 
them in shrouds and got out its own funeral 
garments. 

But Vineclad, sitting some fifteen miles back 
from the Hudson River, never administered 
malaria to its trusting children, and the old 
Garden garden could never have been persuaded 
to harm its three girls, between whom and it 
was a love profoundly sympathetic. 

Mary found Jane, Florimel, Win, and Mark, 


30 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


with Chum nearby, in the comfortable wicker 
chairs which stood about on the grass with which 
the garden emphasized its paths, permitting it 
to grow as a small lawn on the west side of the 
house. Mr. and Mrs. Moulton were just coming 
toward them through the broad path which led 
directly from the side gate. 

Mr. Moulton was not above medium height. 
His hair was grizzled, as was his short-cropped 
moustache; he stooped and peered at the world 
through large-lensed glasses, as if he regarded 
everything, collectively and separately, as speci- 
mens. Mrs. Moulton, on the other hand, car- 
ried herself so erect that she might have been 
protesting that the specimens were not worth 
while. No one had ever seen her dishevelled, 
nor dressed with less than elegant appropriate- 
ness to the time and occasion. The result was 
that she conveyed an effect of elderliness though 
she was not quite fifty years old, which is young 
in this period of the world’s progress. Her light- 
brown hair showed no thread of gray, her aris- 
tocratic face was still but lightly lined, and her 
complexion was fair, yet one thought of her as of 
a person growing old, though doing so with great 
nicety. 

The three Garden girls sprang up to meet these 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


31 


arrivals with the alacrity and deference which 
was the combination of manner that Mrs. Moul- 
ton liked. Florimel damaged the effect this 
time by overturning her chair and stepping on 
Chum’s tail. Both chair and dog bounded as 
this happened and Chum howled, too newly 
adopted to be sure the injury was not intended. 

“A dog, my dear?” asked Mrs. Moulton of 
Jane, at that moment kissing her cheek. But 
she looked beyond Chum at Mark, as being, in 
every sense, the larger object. 

“Yes, Mrs. Moulton,” said Jane, curbing her 
desire to laugh. “Florimel found it lost, and 
brought it home. We have adopted it as a 
friend; it seems to be obedient and good tem- 
pered.” She flashed a look at Mark, calling 
upon him to appreciate this doubly accurate 
description. Her hair, rumpled by the breeze, 
seemed to flash with her eyes; it looked like a 
part of the afterglow in the west now illumining 
the garden. 

“Dog!” said Mr. Moulton, who had not dis- 
covered Chum. “Looks like a boy to me, a boy 
I don’t know.” He peered at Mark through his 
large glasses. 

Win presented Mark, instinctively feeling that 
it would incline Mr. and Mrs. Moulton more 


32 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


favourably toward Mark if Win, and not the 
young girls, assumed the responsibility for him. 

“Walpole, did you say?” Mrs. Moulton re- 
peated after Win. “Mark Walpole? What 
was your father’s name? I knew of Walpoles 
in Massachusetts — what was your town?” 

“Worcester, and my father’s name was 
Cathay. My grandfather was in India, and was 
pretty tired of it. He named my father Cathay 
because he felt as though he had been there a 
hundred years, had ‘a cycle of Cathay,’ you 
know. Hard on my father to get such a name, 
wasn’t it?” replied Mark. 

“That’s the Walpole I meant!” Mrs. Moul- 
ton triumphed. “ The very one ! I didn’t know 
him, but a friend of my girlhood did; one couldn’t 
forget that name. Suppose you sit here and 
talk to me.” She led the way to a bench and 
motioned Mark to a place beside her. 

“And suppose you sit here and talk to me /” 
echoed her husband, drawing a chair close to the 
one he took and inviting Mary to it. Mr. Moul- 
ton availed himself of most opportunities to 
appropriate Mary, his favourite of the three 
girls whom his friend had left to his guardian- 
ship, dear as they all were to him. 

But the conversation did not divide itself off 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


33 


into duets. Mr. Moulton ceased to draw from 
Mary her story of the doings of the Garden 
household since his last report, and Jane and 
Florimel, neither of whom was often silent, 
joined in listening to Mrs. Moulton’s catechism 
of Mark and his answers. 

“It isn’t as if I were all right, you know,” 
Mark said quietly, when he had told her of his 
aim to make his way in the world, though his 
hope of preparing to follow the course he would 
have chosen had been wiped out. “I’m lame. 
It doesn’t bother me much, but it will probably 
get in the way of lots of things a sound boy might 
do. I got my foot smashed when I was a little 
chap and it couldn’t be mended to be as good as 
new. But I’m sure I’ll limp into something — 
something that will keep me out of the bread 
line!” 

“Mark was telling me, Mr. Moulton,” inter- 
posed Win, seeing his chance, “that he had gone 
quite far in botany, already he was planning to 
specialize in it, when he was thrown out of his 
own place in the world. I thought that would 
interest you.” 

“Why not?” said Mr. Moulton, turning from 
Mary to scrutinize Mark anew, scowling at him 
nearsightedly. “ As to being thrown out of your 


34 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


place in the world, my lad, there’s no power on 
earth can play you that trick; it’s every man’s 
work to make the place he’s in his own place. 
It’s a consoling truth — and most absolutely a 
truth — that a man often grows bigger himself 
for having to fit himself to a smaller place than 
he had expected to fill. As to this ambition of 
yours interesting me, touch a man on his hobby 
and there is not much question of interesting 
him! I’m a botanist by choice and profession, 
though luckily for me I could afford to be! I 
live in spite of it, not by means of it. I’m work- 
ing on a vast herbarium and a big book: ‘A 
Study of the Flora of New York.’ Now if you 
knew enough to help me — I’m not sure it would 
be just to your future, but — I could use a clever 
youngster who had what I’d call botanical com- 
mon sense as well as sympathy. Come and see 
me to-morrow morning! I can measure you if 
I have you in my study, but not here. From the 
beginning a garden, a garden with even one girl 
in it, proved fatal to planning for a happy 
future!” Mr. Moulton twinkled behind his 
owl-like lenses. His wife arose to go. 

“When Mr. Moulton becomes facetious I say 
good-night,” she remarked. “I have a few 
chapters of my library book to finish before I 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


35 


sleep. We came only to be assured the Garden 
children still blossomed. Fancy finding Cathay 
Walpole’s boy here ! ” She arose with a rustling, 
impressive dignity, and her husband meekly 
arose also. 

“Another reminiscence of that first garden — 
I do what the woman bids me,” he said. 

The three girls kissed both their guardian and 
his wife, and offered their own cool cheeks to re- 
ceive their good-night kiss. Then they escorted 
them to the gate, while Win strolled beyond it 
with them, accompanying them home. Jane 
and Florimel joined hands and danced like 
nymphs up the walk. It was always a strain 
upon them to keep up to Mrs. Moulton’s stand- 
ards of propriety during one of their visits. Mary 
ran after the two, having lingered a little to say a 
last word to their old friends. Jane switched 
her skirts, held out in both hands, as she danced 
alone around the lawn. Florimel took Chum’s 
forepaws and tried to get her to dance, but the 
big puppy growled a protest and Florimel gave 
it up. 

“Chum knows the hesitation, all right,” ob- 
served Mark. 

Florimel caught Mary as she came and 
swayed her in a mad dance of her own devising. 


36 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Mrs. Moulton knew your father! Mr. 
Moulton is going to love you for old botany’s 
sake. I’ve been lucky fishing to-day!” Florimel 
chanted. “And to-morrow you’ll go to see Mr. 
Moulton, and I’m going to give Chum a bath.” 

Mark laughed, and looked admiringly at her 
brilliant beauty. 

“What is it about helping lame dogs over 
stiles? That’s been your job to-day, Miss 
Gypsy Florimel ! ” 

“We always have nice times,” said Mary, as 
if good luck for Mark and rescue of Chum had 
been her personal gain. “ Come into the house.” 

“Such a kindly, motherly house; I love it,” 
said Mark. 

“It’s the greenhouse, you know, for us Garden 
slips, so it has to be warm and sort of hospita- 
ble,” Jane reminded him. 

They all passed in through the wide door, 
into the broad hall, and the light from the bend 
of the wide staircase fell on four happy young 
faces, and, Mark rightly thought, on three of the 
prettiest girls he had ever seen together. 

“It’s a lucky greenhouse with its specimens,” 
he said shyly, but with a smile at Mary. 


CHAPTER THREE 


“a rosebud set with little wilful thorns’ ’ 

Jane was almost always the first of the Garden 
girls to come down in the morning. She was as 
full of moods, varying in light and shade, as the 
surface of a pool overhung with branches. 
Throughout some of her days she chattered and 
sang in the wildest of high spirits from dawn till 
dark. Again she fell into deep wells of silence 
where nothing could reach her; remote and inac- 
cessible she wrapped herself in her own thoughts, 
refusing to amuse or to be amused on these days. 
Whatever her mood, after the spring had come 
she was faithful to her flower-bed in the garden. 
Mary worked in hers more steadily, Florimel 
with greater gusto — when she worked — but 
Jane gave her bed the place of a beloved volume of 
poetry, in which she read daily. When the birds 
and the eastern sky were tuning up together, in 
sound and colour, Jane sped lightly down the 
stairs and outdoors to look for overnight de- 
velopments in her flowers and to sing above them. 

37 


38 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“You sing to your posies for all the world the 
way the birds sing to waken the spring flowers!” 
Mary once said to her. 

“If I’m a bird I’m a red-headed woodpecker, 
Molly darling, and he doesn’t sing,” retorted 
Jane, rumpling her brilliant locks. 

The morning after Mark’s arrival Jane’s cus- 
tom held good. Before any one else was down- 
stairs she opened the door and went out into the 
fragrance and music of the late May morning, 
into the lovely old garden. Had there been any 
one there to see, they would have noticed that 
Jane wore her new brown street gown, not one 
of the simple chambreys in which she ordinarily 
said good-morning to her seedlings, who waited 
in bed for her coming — in fact, stayed in bed all 
day. 

In a few moments there was some one to note 
this variation. Florimel followed Jane into the 
garden shortly, and instantly was upon her with 
an accusation. 

“You’re dressed up, Jane Garden; where’re 
you going?” she cried. 

“Florimel, don’t speak so loud,” Jane frowned 
at her. “I don’t want Mary to know, not till 
I get back; of course I’ll tell her afterward. I 
won’t tell you where I’m going; then you can 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 39 

truthfully say you don’t know where I am when 
they ask.” 

“They won’t get a chance to ask; I’m going 
with you,” announced Florimel. 

“Indeed you’re not! You can’t! I wouldn’t 
mind, I’d like to have you, but you simply 
can’t,” declared Jane. “Don’t be a nuisance 
and a baby, Mel; I can’t let you go, or I would,” 
she added out of her experiences in Florimel’s 
possibilities. 

“I simply will go, unless you tell me where it 
is you’re going, and I see for myself I can’t go or 
I don’t want to,” declared Florimel. “Of 
course that’s plain silly, Jane. I can go wher- 
ever you go. If you tell me where it is and I do 
happen to stay at home I won’t tell Mary or 
any one. But if you don’t tell me I’ll tell what 
you just said and get them all stirred up — Mary, 
Win, Anne, everybody. And you know what I 
say I’ll do. I’ll do.” 

Jane knew precisely this truth. “I can’t 
take you, Florimel, because you’re too young,” 
she said unwisely. 

“Two years and three months younger than 
you are!” interposed Florimel scornfully. 
“What’s that!” 

“A lot when I’m only fifteen,” said Jane. 


40 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“I’m going before breakfast; I’ve had all I want 
out of the pantry. Well, then, Mel, I’ll tell 
you, but it’s on your word of honour not to say 
anything till I do— you promised!” 

“Don’t I know I promised?” retorted Flori- 
mel. “And don’t you know wild horses and hot 
pokers couldn’t get me to tell, if I said I wouldn’t? 
Then hurry up!” 

“I’ve always thought I had talent to act,” 
Jane announced. She continued, disregarding 
Florimel’s hastily stifled laughter: “I thought, 
maybe, I ought to go on the stage — of course 
not yet, but after I was, say three years older, 
and had studied for it. There’s a company in 
town now— acted in the Crystal Theatre last 
night. . They are going away this morning on 
the 10.10. The leading lady’s name is Alyssa 
Aldine — I think Aldine always sounds like nice 
people; I suppose because the Aldine editions 
of books are so famous. Then I read such nice- 
sounding things about her in the Vineclad Post 
that I knew she wasn’t one of the ordinary ac- 
tresses; she must be beautiful and clever. And 
it came to me like a flash that I would slip off 
early this morning, and get to the hotel before 
they leave, and ask to see Miss Aldine and get 
her to tell me frankly whether she thinks I ought 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


41 


to go on the stage. A girl ought to try to find 
out just as early as she can what is her work in 
the world. I suppose I could recite and sing to 
Miss Aldine, if I had to, though I’d dread it. 
You see there aren’t many chances to get good 
advice about the stage, here; it isn’t often that 
talented, refined ladies come to Vineclad to act, 
they say.” 

Florimel had heard this speech of Jane’s with 
utter amazement and disgust on her handsome 
face, which, childish though it was, was quite 
capable of expressing disgust with its black eyes 
and curling red lips. 

“Well, Jane! Well, Jane Garden /” Florimel 
cried scornfully the instant Jane paused. “Talk 
about my being younger than you are! Why, 
you’re a baby ! Haven’t you heard Win talk 
about the companies that come to the Crystal? 
One-night-stand companies, he says, that travel 
about in the country towns, are never any good! 
We never go. The idea of your going to call on 

this actress and asking her — well ” Florimel 

broke off, unable to express herself more sat- 
isfyingly. 

“I told you, Florimel, that I read about Miss 
Aldine in the Post and she is not one of that 
ordinary kind,” said Jane severely. “I am 


42 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


going. It can’t do any harm, and it may do 
good. Don’t you tell Mary till I get back; don’t 
tell her at all; I will. But you can’t go with me.” 

“I can and I will,” said Florimel in the tone 
which her family had learned to recognize as 
final. “I’m going to see you don’t get kid- 
napped by these queer people. Take Anne, if 
you’re bound to go! But you won’t! So I’m 
going. I know you, Jane Garden. When you 
got there you’d double up, you’d be so scared. 
That’s you all over, getting up some perfectly" 
crazy idea like this and then all but dying doing 
it, when there never was the least bit of sense in 
doing it, anyway! I’ll get a sandwich and my 
hat. Crazy Jane, that’s what you are!” 

Florimel walked off rigid with determination, 
excitement, and disapproval, leaving Jane with a 
sense of their youngest’s competence, and relief 
that, after all, she was not going upon her ad- 
venture alone. Florimel returned with her 
sandwich and her hat disposed each in its proper 
place and manfier. The sandwich had become 
plural; luckily the hat had not. “I put a scrawl 
on Mary’s napkin telling her we had gone down- 
town on a secret errand, but would be back by 
ten,” said Florimel. “Good thing I didn’t run 
into Anne; she’d have been hard to quiet down. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 43 

You’ve got on your street suit, and I haven’t, 
but I guess this is good enough.” 

“You look very nice in that green and white 
chambrey, Mel,” said Jane meekly. And the 
sisters sallied forth by the side gate of the gar- 
den into the quiet, shaded street. 

It was a long walk to the heart of the small 
town where stood the Waldorf, Vineclad’s shabby 
and unique hotel, near the Crystal Theatre, 
which escaped by not much more than its name 
being merely a small town hall. Hollyhock 
House stood well beyond the collected business of 
Vineclad, out beyond the smaller homes of the 
place, built where acres for its setting and for 
its garden had been obtainable. 

Jane and Florimel timed their progress to get 
to the hotel before eight, but they fell below their 
estimate of time required and got to the hotel 
somewhat before half -past seven. 

“Good morning, young ladies,” said the clerk, 
as the girls halted before his desk. “You are 
familiar to me, yet I cannot place you. What 
can I do for you? Are you denizens of our 
lovely town?” 

“Yes,” said Jane, without further enlighten- 
ing him. “I want to see Miss Aldine, Miss 
Alyssa Aldine. She doesn’t know me, but please 


44 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


ask if I may see her — on business, important 
business.” 

The clerk leaned over his desk as if to take the 
young girls into his confidence and Jane and 
Florimel fell back a few steps. 

“Why, bless your lovely face and heart,” he 
said, “what time do you think the perfesh, 
which stop here, rises? — especially the lady per- 
feshes? Just in time to take the train! Just 
— barely — in — time — to — take — the — train, hus- 
tling!” He, too, fell back at this and regarded 
the girls triumphantly. “Breakfast in bed— 
also in curl papers — and a hustle to make the 
train. That’s the racket. Grand show last 
night; was you to it? Pity! Grand show. 
Now, I’ll tell you what to do. You go sit down 
comfortable in two of the Waldorf’s rockers, in 
the parlour, and wait calm and easy. And I’ll 
get a message up to Miss Aldine just ’s soon as I 
think she will stand for it, and see if she won’t 
meet you. Peachy lady, she is, but I’ll tell her 
there’s two little girls here worth her looking at. 
Is that a go? Best I can do.” 

“Thank you,” said Jane faintly, already dis- 
mayed by the unaccustomed atmosphere which 
she was breathing. “Yes, thank you; we’ll 
wait.” 



“ * WHAT TIME DO YOU THINK THE PERFESH, WHICH STOP HERE, RISES? * 



























































































* 












































































HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


45 


“It’s all right; it’s very early, earlier than we 
thought we’d get here. Don’t hurry,” Florimel 
supplemented Jane with decision. “For good- 
ness’ sake, Jane, now you are here, don’t fade 
right out! Didn’t I say you’d be like that?” 
she added in a severe whisper as Jane and she 
followed their guide to the overwhelming red 
plush of the Waldorf parlour. 

The time of waiting seemed desperately long 
to both girls. The grandfather clock ticking in 
the corner — it had been manufactured to sell 
with a large order of cigars in the most recent 
of periods — seemed to accomplish less by its 
seconds than any other clock Jane and Florimel 
had ever met. At last an hour passed, and 
twenty minutes followed it. Then the clerk 
returned with a smiling face and the important 
manner of a triumphant ambassador. 

“You’re to come right up to her room,” he 
whispered, not because there was any one else 
there to hear, but because his words were too 
precious to be scattered broadcast. “I done my 
best for you, and she’ll see you.” 

Jane and Florimel arose at once. Jane was 
so pale that the clerk noticed it. “Don’t be 
scared,” he advised her kindly. “She’s easy 
to get acquainted with.” He took the girls 


46 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


up one flight of stairs and along a dusty corri- 
dor, carpeted in red and smelling of ancient 
histories. 

“ Here’s the room!” announced the clerk, 
swinging around a right angle turn in the cor- 
ridor and pausing before a door at the end of 
the wing thus reached. “ Number 22 !” he 
added, as if announcing the capital prize in a 
lottery. He knocked for the girls, seeing them 
overwhelmed, and withdrew with a wink that 
might have meant anything. 

“Stay out!” cried a feminine voice. 

Rightly construing this as humour, Jane 
timidly opened the door. She saw before her 
a blowsy looking woman, in a pink kimono, its 
thin quality and flowing amplitude, as well as 
its heavy, once-white lace trimming, adding to 
the extreme rotundity of its wearer. Her hair 
was in curl papers, her feet in soiled pink 
“mules.” Beyond her sat a small woman, thin 
and tired looking, but animated, and still an- 
other with an indefinite face. Three men also 
adorned the room, all smoking; one of them was 
helping the indefinite woman to cram garments, 
that had not been folded, into a suitcase. 

“Well, you pretty pair!” exclaimed the wearer 
of the pink kimono. “Say, Petey, what d’you 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 47 

know about this? Some lookers to drop in at 
this hour in a deserted village, what?” 

“ Right-o ! Nice little pair, eh, Nettie?” the 
man addressed threw the question back at the 
pink kimono; plainly this was their preferred 
way of conversing. 

4 4 May we Is Miss Aldine May we 

see Miss Aldine?” stammered Jane. 

An exceedingly pudgy hand, decorated with 
several rings of great distinctness but little dis- 
tinction, and souvenirs of buttered toast, dra- 
matically struck the pink kimono where it was 
pinned together with a rhinestone bar. 

“I am Miss Aldine— on the stage — Alyssa 
Aldine, leading lady of the comp’ny. In pri- 
vate I’m Mrs. Pete Mi vie — he’s Sydney Flem- 
ing on the stage, plays leadin’ man to my hero- 
ines.” Mrs. Mivle beamed proudly on her 
Pete-, who assumed a look reminiscent of his 
more picturesque roles and twirled his moustache 
with a hand upon which a diamond of at least 
three karats gleamed, genuine but yellowish. 

“Got that off a chap that went stoney broke, 
at a bargain,” he exclaimed, seeing Jane’s eyes 
fastened upon it with what he took for awe. 

“Say, what d’you want?” continued Miss 
Aldine, actually Mrs. Mivle, kindly, but in a 


48 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


businesslike tone. “Not that we ain’t pleased 
to death to see you, but you must of had an ob- 
jec’ in cornin’ — or was it for my autograph? 
Pete writes ’em.” 

“Oh, no!” cried Jane, dismayed to hear 
sounds in Florimel’s throat that meant she 
was suffocating with laughter. “I came — I 
thought ” She stopped. 

“Say it!” advised the small, thin woman who 
looked past forty, and who played the young 
girl parts in the company’s repertory because 
of her diminutive size. “We’ve breakfasted; 
we won’t eat you! Get it out of your sys- 
tem.” 

“I meant to ask your advice about studying 
for the stage,” Jane said, by a supreme effort. 
“But there’s no use troubling you; ever so much 
obliged.” 

“Cold feet so soon?” suggested Peter Mivle 
kindly. “Lots of kids get stage struck! If you 
wanted to follow the legitimate, we could use 
you. Of course you’re too young, but there are 
ways of dodging the law. You’d make a great 
team, red and black, blond and brunette. Sis- 
ters?” 

“Oh, no; I meant to study to be an actress 
when I’m older, if it was surely my proper 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


49 


talent,” said Jane. “Never mind; thank you 
ever so much.” 

Mrs. Mi vie laughed. 4 4 Lady Macbeth and 
all that kind, eh?” she suggested. 44 We play 
old comedy and society plays, like ‘East Lynne,’ 
4 Ten Nights in a Bar Room,’ and so on. 
Shakespeare’s no good; we’ve got some funny 
ones, too. Take it from me, kid, it’s hard work 
keepin’ on the go every day, sleepin’ in damp 
sheets and beds that are about as soft as coal 
beds half the time. One-night-stand companies 
don’t find many snaps layin’ along the tracks. 
And there ain’t much in it. But we have good 
times enough together; no jealousy nor mean- 
ness in our gang. You drop the stage notion 
and trim hats ! Easier, and you can stick to one 
boardin’-house and make good money. Ain’t 
you two got a home, pretty girls like you? 
You’d think anybody’d have adopted ’em,” she 
added, turning again to Peter. 

44 Oh, yes,” cried Jane, 44 we have a lovely — • 
a home. We — I mean I only wanted your 
advice ” She stopped again. 

Florimel could not resist her temptation. 
“My sister thought perhaps she had so much 
talent for acting that it was her duty to go on 
the stage. She read about Miss Aldine in the 


50 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Vineclad Post and came to ask her advice, 
whether she thought she ought to study for the 
stage. That’s all.” 

Florimel’s eyes danced and Mrs. Mivle and the 
elderly actress of youthful parts twinkled back 
at her. 

“The little one has the drop on you, my dear,” 
Mrs. Mivle said joyously to Jane. “She’s got 
practical sense. I guess you’re up in the clouds; 
red-haired girls often are. But you’ve got hair 
that ’twould be worth being up into anything — 
or up against anything to have! If you’ve got 
a good home, what you botherin’ about? Stick 
to it; that’s what I say. I’m an artist all right, 
all right; you read what your paper says about 
me. But no art in mine, if I had the means to 
settle right down and bake pies like mother used 
to make. Must you go? Well, good-bye and 
good luck. So long! Hope to meet you again. 
Come see us act if ever we take in this town on 
this circuit again. We’re the real thing, if I 
do say it!” The others of the company bade 
Jane and Florimel good-bye, shaking hands with 
them with the utmost cordiality, and Peter 
Mivle, or “Sydney Fleming,” escorted them to 
the stairs. 

Jane heard the laugh that arose behind them 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


51 


in the room they had left, but she also heard 
“Miss Aldine” say heartily: “Perfect beauts, 
that’s what ! ” And the voice of the little woman 
came out to them, saying pensively: “Oh, 
Nettie Mivle, ain’t it fine to be young like that, 
and not acting it!” 

Jane and Florimel walked swiftly out of the 
little hotel with the great name, escaping from 
the clerk’s evident desire to learn the result of 
their call and its object, and from the idle lads 
who were gathering around the desk to see the 
actors, whose “show” they had seen the night 
before, come out and to compare actual appear- 
ances with those behind the footlights. The 
walk home was a silent one for Jane, but at in- 
tervals Florimel burst into laughter that was 
irresistible to passers-by and irrepressible to 
Florimel. Mary was busy when they came in, 
arranging the flowers which the garden yielded; 
not many yet in variety, but generous in quan- 
tity, even in May. 

“Where can you two have been?” cried Mary, 
looking up with her sweet face smiling at them 
in a way that seemed to match the flowers be- 
neath her cool finger-tips. “And so early? 
What are you up to, Garden girls? Have you 
had any breakfast, you rogues? ” 


52 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“ Oh, Mary, wait till you hear ! ” cried Florimel, 
throwing her hat in one direction and herself in 
another, on a chair. “We’ve been to see Miss 
Aldine; Jane wanted to be examined, but she 
changed her mind. Petey Mivle — that’s Syd- 
ney Fleming — said she ” 

“Florimel, what can you be talking about?” 
cried Mary. “Who are all these people? Ex- 
amined by whom, and for what?” 

“Oh, I’ll tell you, Mary,” Jane took up the 
theme impatiently. “Florimel is so silly! Of 
course it was funny, only how was I to know Miss 
Aldine was Mrs. Mivle and that what the Post 
said wasn’t so?” Jane laughed at herself, her 
sense of humour too strong to allow her to feel 
annoyed with Florimel long. 

“Positively I believe you’ve both gone crazy 
together, over night!” cried Mary. “Miss Al- 
dine is Mrs. Mivle, you say? And Florimel 
is talking of ‘Petey Mivle’ — like a schoolmate — 

and the Post Hurry the story!” 

“Sit down, Mary, and I’ll harrow your young 
blood!” declared Jane, and forthwith gave her 
sister an account of her resolution to seek a great 
actress to ask advice on her career, and of the 
visit to the Waldorf. Jane told her story so 
well that Mary and Florimel and Anne, who had 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


53 


come in to find out what her younger charges 
had been doing, were all three in convulsions. 
It might have warranted any one in thinking 
that Jane was right in considering the stage her 
vocation. 

“Oh, me, oh, me!” sighed Mary, emerging 
from the sofa pillows into which she had help- 
lessly fallen. “You do such mad things, Janie! 
And you are so wilful! You ought not to have 
started off alone on such an errand, to people 
you knew absolutely nothing about! Florimel 
is a headstrong child, but even she is more pru- 
dent. They must be kind people, if they are un- 
tidy, and flashy, and trashy! I’m glad they 
were so nice to you. Please, Jane, settle down 
and stop being restless-minded!” 

“Can’t do it,” said Jane promptly. “I sup- 
pose there’s fire inside my head and the roots of 
my hair are in it. That’s why I’m always crac- 
kling off in explosions, and why my hair is red.” 

“And I suppose we want you to be just what 
you are, if we tell the truth,” added Mary as 
she went out of the room. She could not bear 
to seem to criticise Jane or Florimel, being 
sensitively alive to a dread of hurting them, 
and conscious of the slight difference in their 
ages. 


54 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Florimel ran after Mary, and Anne Kenning- 
ton turned to Jane. 

“What put the stage into your head, Jane?” 
she asked. “ Were you thinking of your mother? 
You don’t look like her, but you are more like 
her, in some ways, than either of the others.” 

“My mother?” echoed Jane. “Mercy, no, 
Anne ! Why should I? ” 

“Well, of course she did not go on the stage, 
yet singing is, in a way, like it,” said Anne. 
“You know your mother was a singer and she 
couldn’t keep away from the old life: singing, 
and applause, and all that, after she was a widow. 
You know she left you here to go back to it.” 

“Yes, I knew all that,” said Jane slowly, “but 
I seem to have to try to know it; it isn’t real to 
me. I never can make my mother real to me, 
Anne. You knew lier. I wish you could make 
me feel what she was like.” 

“Knew her? I came over with her before 
she married and I stayed with her till she went 
back to England. She left me; never I her,” 
said Anne warmly. “Just a slender bit of a 
thing was she, like a primrose, one that you 
couldn’t help spoiling, such coaxing ways she 
had and such a pretty face, with a little droop 
of her shoulders and a fall in her voice as if she 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


55 


begged a body to be good to her. I’d have cut 
off my head for her willingly. So I stayed, and 
did my best for her babies, without her.” 

“And what a best!” cried Jane, with a flash- 
ing look of grateful love. “ Oh, I wish I had seen 
her! You make her a darling, Anne; just a sort 
of toy mother, to be petted and to be proud of! 
Why did she die, Anne? Do you know? No 
one ever told us; not even Mary knows about 
her death.” 

“I never heard one word about her dying, 
Jane; never the time, nor place, nor any sylla- 
ble,” said Anne truthfully. “I mustn’t stand 
clacketing here any longer, Jane; I’ve more to 
do than I’ve minutes, though the good Lord 
gives to each of us all the time there is, if only 
we think about it.” 

Anne hastened away, and Jane walked over 
to the window, absently watching Mark Wal- 
pole returning from his call on Mr. Moulton, 
though without consciously seeing him, nor re- 
membering that she had been deeply interested 
in the result of this visit. 

“What a pretty little toy mother! How I 
wish I had her, or had even seen her!” thought 
Jane, swinging the shade pull. “And now 
Mary can’t remember her more than as a shadow 


56 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


before a mirror! Oh, little coaxing mother, I 
wonder why you left your three girl babies? 
Perhaps because you were only a girl your- 
self. But we lost something we can never get 
back.” 


CHAPTER FOUR 


“home at evening’s close, 

TO SWEET REPAST AND CALM REPOSE” 

Mark Walpole came up the walk at a rapid 
gait, swinging one arm and breathing through 
his puckered lips as though he were whistling, 
though the tune of it was in his mind only; no 
sound came forth. Mary met him at the door 
with her pretty air of self-forgetfulness and ab- 
sorption in others, the manner that was all 
Mary’s, as if she were an anxiously motherly 
old lady and, at the same time, a childishly 
innocent young girl. 

“You were gone a long time; was it a nice 
visit?” she asked. 

“Great!” cried Mark, in a tone that left no 
doubt of his sincerity. “Such a collection as 
Mr. Moulton has made! I never saw plants 
pressed and preserved like his. He says he has 
discovered a trifling secret, but a big one, that 
makes his specimens less brittle. And his book 
is all right, too ! He is writing from a new angle. 

57 


58 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


I don’t see how he will ever finish it. Maybe 
some younger man will carry it on. That’s 
what he said. He said he’d be relieved to know 
there was some one to keep on with it if he 
dropped out, some one who understood his 
ideas thoroughly. It would mean a lot to fit 
one’s self to carry on this really great book, but 

maybe if I did my best ” Mark left his 

sentence unfinished. 

Mary caught at its meaning eagerly. “Then 
Mr. Moulton does want you to help him?” she 
cried. “You did get on well with him?” 

Mark grinned, with a boyishly sheepish look 
of satisfaction. “As to that, he was awfully 
nice and kind, in a gruff way that I liked — after 
I caught on to his methods. And I got so 
wound up over his specimens and the book plans 
that — well, I guess he saw I wasn’t faking it, 
for he thawed right out. He’s going to take me 
on as a — I don’t know what you would call it — 
amanuensis, or secretary, but, thank goodness, 
it’s more than that, because I’m to help with 
the work, if I know enough; not merely copy 
and put notes in order.” 

Mary laughed delightedly, clasping her hands 
before her in an ecstatic little way that she had, 
as if she were congratulating herself on being glad. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


59 


“You look like another boy!” she cried. 
“Isn’t it fine? I’m almost as glad as you are! 
Mr. Moulton is a dear, the dearest of dears, 
but he has to be found out — like gold and jewels ! 
And his wife is another dear. I know you will 
be happy, and the greatest comfort to Mr. 
Moulton; he’s been longing for a helper. Isn’t 
it fine ! ” 

“You girls and your unc — and Win did it. 
Florimel made me come home with her, and 
you’ve all been great to me! I’m awfully 
grateful, though I can’t say so as I want to. 
Miss Gard — well, then, Mary!” Mark corrected 
himself, as Mary shook her head at his relapse 
into forbidden formality. “But ‘Miss Guard’ 
suits you to a T ! I’m not sure I shan’t call you 
Miss Guard; you certainly mother this house, if 
you are younger than I am.” 

“She smothers the house,” Jane corrected 
him, entering that moment. But she swung 
Mary off her feet in a rapid hug to illustrate her 
actual meaning. 

“What’s happened?” cried Florimel, dashing 
in from the garden. Chum bounded after her; 
she had lost every remnant of doubt as to the 
sort of home she had found; indeed her manner 
conveyed that she had owned the house first 


60 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


and had kindly allowed the Gardens to use it. 
Florimers skirt was torn and she and Chum left 
loam tracks wherever they stepped, which 
seemed to be everywhere. But Chum’s expres- 
sion was so foolishly blissful, and Florimel’s 
brilliant beauty was so irresistible, that Mary 
stifled her impulse to protest and beamed on the 
youngest Garden and the dog, inwardly re- 
solving to repair damages before busy Abbie 
could see them. 

“What’d he say?” panted Florimel, jumping 
up and down in front of Mark, whose success 
or failure she considered her own particular 
affair. 

“He said we’d have a trying time, Florimel,” 
replied Mark, laughing at her. “He’d try me 
and I’d try him, and if the trial proved me com- 
petent, he’d take me into his tent and be content; 
but if trying me proved too trying he’d not try 
to try me any longer!” 

“For pity’s sake!” cried Florimel, shaking 
Mark’s arm. “My head feels like a snarl of 
wool! What do you mean, anyhow? What 
did Mr. Moulton say, Mary?” 

“Mark is going to help him, Mel,” said Mary. 
“I’m sure it is going to be the best thing that 
ever happened; I’m as happy as I can be about 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 61 

it. Did you know you had torn your skirt, 
dear? And it’s a new one.” 

“I rolled over on it, Mary, too tight — I mean 
the skirt was pulled down under me tight when 
I fell over. I was sitting on my heels, weeding. 
And Chum thought it was a joke and ran over 
to bite and yank me, so I kicked out, quite hard, I 
suppose, because I heard that tearing, crashing 
sound that you read about in stories of ships 

striking icebergs, and when I looked ” 

Florimel ended her account of the disaster with 
a dramatic gesture downward. 

“Make her mend it herself, Mary, and then 
wear it; she tears everything, and you mend and 
mend for her, and never scold her!” said Jane, 
frowning because Mary smiled when she should 
have frowned at careless Florimel. 

“Certainly I shall mend it!” said Florimel, 
who had never been known to repair anything 
she had torn. “When I went with you to call 
on your friend, Miss Aldine, Jane, I decided to 
begin to mend the very first time anything hap- 
pened to me! Then if Mary were sick I could 
mend for you, when you went on the stage, if 
that sloppy lot were the way you’d have to be. 
It was what Mrs. Moulton calls an object lesson 
to me.” 


62 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Jane coloured with annoyance over this allu- 
sion, but could not help laughing at the look 
Florimel gave her out of her dancing black eyes, 
her rosy face pulled down to severity as she 
spoke. 

“It’s a precious good thing I let you go with 
me, Miss, if it was an object lesson and makes 
you spare poor Mary some of your mending,” 
she retorted. “ There’s the telephone; I’ll an- 
swer it.” 

At the end of the hall Jane took down the re- 
ceiver and they heard her say: “Yes. No, 

it’s Jane. Oh, Mr. Moulton, I didn’t know 
your voice. How funny it sounds. Have you 
a cold? That’s good, but your voice sounds 
husky and queer, as if it didn’t work right. 
Yes, sir; we’re all here. You’ll be over in about 
an hour? All right, Mr. Moulton; good-bye. 
They’re coming over, Mr. and Mrs. Moulton,” 
Jane said, rejoining her sisters. “He says he 
has something most important and unexpected 
to tell us. He sounded so queer! If it had 
been one of us I’d have said he was excited.” 

“No, you wouldn’t,” observed Mark. “ You’d 
say she was excited.” 

“Oh, dear me,” sighed Jane. “Nothing worse 
than fussy people! Maybe I wouldn’t; maybe 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


63 


Win would have been home, or you here, and I’d 
still have said he. Coming with me to get ready 
to see the Moultons, Mary gold? They’ll be here 
so late we shall have to get dressed for supper 
before they come.” 

“Yes. Florimel, if Mrs. Moulton saw you 
wearing that torn skirt I don’t know what might 
happen to her,” said Mary, joining Jane at the 
foot of the stairs. 

“She’ll see me wearing a whole skirt. Wait 
till I put Chum out,” said Florimel. 

Mary and Jane did not take Florimel’s 
“ wait ” literally. They knew that putting Chum 
out could hardly be called putting — it involved 
long coaxing and wiles, and feigned enthusiasm 
and excitement over a cat in the garden, which 
had no existence there or elsewhere. So the 
two older girls went on up to their rooms, leav- 
ing Florimel to the persuasion of Chum. 

“What do you say it is?” asked Jane a little 
later, standing in Mary’s chamber door, her 
radiant hair falling over her white skirt and fly- 
ing around her face in a glory to which Mary 
never became thoroughly accustomed. Jane 
was drying her face as she spoke; she never could 
be kept in the proper spot long enough to finish 
any part of her toilet. Mary was bent over, 


64 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


combing up the heavy masses of her own soft 
brown hair. She looked up from under it at 
Jane’s reflection in the mirror. 

“What do I suppose what is?” Mary asked. 

“What Mr. Moulton has to tell us, of course,” 
said Jane. “I’ve been thinking. He’s our 
guardian, you know, so I think it’s one of two 
things: Either we are a great deal poorer than 
we are supposed to be, or a great deal richer. 
His voice certainly sounded excited; the more I 
think of it the surer I am that Mr. Moulton’s 
voice was queer. When guardians in books 
have anything to tell their wards it is somethng 
about money, so I suppose we’re beggared, or 
else ” 

“We’re not!” Mary ended Jane’s sentence 
for her with a laugh. “Just like the effect of 
the White Knight’s poem, which either brought 
tears to your eyes or it didn’t! Janie, you’re 
the greatest goose — for a duck! You’re pre- 
cisely like the heathen imagining vain things! 
Mr. Moulton probably wants to talk about 
naming a plant for one of us; he’s been talking 
about that ever since he began experimenting 
with those hybrids of his, which are going to pro- 
duce a new flower.” 

“You’ll see!” said Jane, throwing out her 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


65 


hair and running her fingers through it till it 
crackled and followed them, standing out around 
her. 

“Jane,” protested Mary, “go away! You 
make me think of the burning bush and ‘the 
pillar of fire by night/ till I feel quite wicked 
and irreverent.” 

Instead of going away Jane came over and 
kissed Mary in the hollow of the back of her 
neck: “If I could make you feel wicked, you 
old lump of goodness, you, I’d follow you around 
every minute. ’Tisn’t fair that Mel and I have 
all the Garden badness — all the weediness,” she 
declared. 

Just as Mary and Jane ran downstairs, both 
fresh and lovely in pale lawns, Win came in at 
the front door. 

“ What’s up? ” he asked at once. “ Mr. Moul- 
ton telephoned the office for me to be home early, 
that he was coming here to tell us all something, 
and would like me to be here, if I could be. 
What’s up?” 

“We don’t know,” began Mary, slightly dis- 
turbed, feeling that this must portend more than 
the naming of a new hybrid. Jane took the 
words out of her mouth. “We don’t know,” 
she said, “but I’m sure that we have had a lot 


66 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


of money come somehow, or else we’re so poor, 
everything swept away, that we’ve got to be 
cash girls, at four dollars a week.” 

“Too much,” said Win, shaking his head. 
“Red-haired girls at three-fifty; that’s the rule.” 

“They’re coming, anyway, Mr. and Mrs. Moul- 
ton are coming,” Florimel called over the bani- 
sters as she hurriedly buttoned her waist in the 
back and pulled it down into place after she had 
done this. “We’ll soon know what it is. 
Mother was English, wasn’t she? Maybe we’re 
earls, I mean dukes, duchesses — oh, noble!” 

“We are noble, Mel,” said Win gravely; 
“ very noble. If we weren’t noble, my dear, we 
should long ago have dealt with you as you 
deserve.” 

Mark was nowhere to be seen, though he was 
staying this second night in Hollyhock House, 
having arranged to begin his service to Mr. 
Moulton on the next day. 

“He’s a nice boy to take himself off, but Mr. 
Moulton can’t have anything to say that any 
one might not hear,” said Win, going out to meet 
the visitors. Yet when Win came back, step- 
ping aside to allow the girls’ guardian to precede 
him into the house, there was an instant per- 
ception of something out of the ordinary on the 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


67 


part of the three Garden girls. It was so strong 
that it was as if they had not thought of it be- 
fore; Mr. Moulton’s face was quite red, his man- 
ner distinctly nervous, and his wife looked 
greatly disturbed. Mary found it difficult to 
greet them, while Jane, who was like an elec- 
trical wire in receiving impressions, turned pale 
and put out her hand to her old friends without 
speaking. 

“My dears,” Mr. Moulton began, having 
cleared his throat portentously, “I have an ex- 
traordinary announcement to make to you; 
nothing bad, so don’t be frightened, but it will 
certainly amaze you. I don’t know how to be- 
gin. Do you know your mother’s name?” 

“There!” exclaimed Florimel involuntarily. 
“Jane said it was money, but I knew it was the 
nobility!” 

“Lynette Devon, wasn’t it, Mr. Moulton?” 
said Mary, with a reproving glance at Florimel. 

“Lynette Devon was her maiden name,” as- 
sented Mr. Moulton, glancing at his wife, who 
sat nervously on the edge of her chair, as if pre- 
pared to render any sort of aid to any one in- 
stantly. “You never heard of the manner nor 
time of her death, did you?” Mr. Moulton went 
on. “No!” he added as the three girls shook 


68 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


their heads and Mary clasped her hands quickly 
and gasped: “Oh, Mr. Moulton!” 

“No, you never did. The impression that she 
was dead has been intentionally given you, be- 
cause it was the kindest thing to do to keep you 
from worrying and longing to get in touch with 
her. But, my dears, your mother is not dead.” 

The three girls sat in utter silence for a few 
moments after this announcement. Mary, white 
to the lips, clasped and unclasped her hands, 
looking imploringly at Mr. Moulton with her 
lovely brown eyes as prayerful as a dog’s. Flori- 
mel seemed dazed, and Jane, alarmingly white 
and thin looking — Jane had a trick of looking 
thin under emotion — suddenly dropped over on 
the arm of her chair and shook with dry sobs. 
Win sat silent, looking rather stern. 

“We do not understand,” Mary managed to 
whisper at last. 

“Win remembers her; he was eleven years 
old when she went away.” Mr. Moulton halted 
again over the beginning of his story. 

“He never talked about her to us,” said Mary 
reproachfully. 

“I know,” assented Mr. Moulton, watching 
his wife as she vainly tried to calm Jane, and 
finally went quietly to find Anne Kennington 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


69 


and ask for aromatic ammonia. “Win had a 
boy’s resentment against his sister-in-law for 
leaving you, and for leaving him, also. He 
was fond of her and bitterly resented her ‘de- 
serting you,’ as he called it. I used to try to 
reconcile Win and teach him to judge Mrs. 
Garden gently, but he was too young to learn 
charity. He helped me to keep from you 
younger children the fact that she was alive — 
which he has not suspected, I know — by believing 
that she had died, and asking no questions.” 
Mr. Moulton smiled at the bewildered young 
man, who was not less stunned than the girls 
by this information. “Jane, my dear, try to 
control yourself. There is nothing about find- 
ing one’s mother alive to cry over, and I want 
you to hear what I say,” said Mr. Moulton, 
with better effect on Jane’s nerves than his 
wife’s prescription. Jane stood in awe of her 
guardian. 

“Your mother, my dears, was married young. 
It was not so young that she had not tasted 
the delight of holding an audience by her charm- 
ing voice — she sang like the linnet she was called 
— and by her remarkable talent for mimicry. 
She was the best mimic I ever heard; she could 
burlesque anybody, and imitate almost any 


70 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


sound. She was a great pet with audiences over 
in England, when she married an American, 
considerably her elder — your father and my 
friend. He took her away from her audiences 
and her country and set her down in the old 
Garden house amid the old Garden garden. 
Here you, her three babies, were born in four 
years. I knew Lynette as well as a sober codger 
like me could know such a radiant creature, but 
I never knew whether or not she longed for her 
professional life. Then, your father dead, Flori- 
mel a baby of a year, she suddenly announced 
that she could bear it no longer, but must re- 
turn to her singing and entertaining. I was 
your guardian, children; Anne was devotion to 
you incarnate; your mother knew that she was 
leaving her babies to absolute safety, better 
care than most mothered babies get. Of course 
no one else can understand how the old life 
could call her with half the force your baby 
voices would have to hold her. Mrs. Moulton 
has never understood it.” Mr. Moulton glanced 
at his wife, who looked grimly at him in return. 
“I don’t understand it myself, but Lynette 
Devon loved her old life and she was unable to 
resist its lure. She went back, and all these past 
twelve years, while you have thought her dead. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


71 

she has been entrancing the English public, 
quite as great a success as before her marriage.” 

Mary looked at her guardian, her eyes so full 
of appeal that he paused. 

“What is it, Mary, dear?” he asked. 

“Nobody has been blaming our mother all 

this time, have they? She is ” Mary could 

not frame her question. 

“She is an artist, Mary, and everything she 
does is worth doing, if that is what you would 
like to ask,” Mr. Moulton assured her. “She 
sings good music and does clever entertaining; 
every one praises her. She is a child and an ar- 
tist; she could not be domestic, and, as long as her 
babies were comfortable and safe, she saw no 
reason why she should deny her nature and stay 
here. We cannot understand that — — •” 

“Yes, I can!” Jane interrupted him to cry. 
“I couldn’t leave an animal to suffer, but I can 
see why she had to go back. Isn’t it wonderful , 
Mary?” 

“Ah, but, Jane, here’s the hard part of it!” 
said Mr. Moulton. “You see her days of giving 
and getting joy in her own way were not long. 
Lynette is only thirty-seven now, and, though 
that may sound decrepit to you, it is young. 
And your mother’s voice is gone, her career 


72 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


ended. She caught a severe cold, was seriously 
ill for some months this last winter, and when 
she recovered it was but a partial recovery — 
her beautiful voice was completely gone. So 
now she is laid on the shelf. She wrote to 


“She wants to come home!” cried Mary, 
starting to her feet, and Jane and Florimel were 
on theirs as quickly. 

“Sit down, children; she is not outside,” 
smiled Mr. Moulton. “She wrote me that ‘if 
her little girls were not angry with her for having 
cast them off for her career, if they would re- 
ceive her, now that her career was ended and she 
had nothing but them to turn to, she would like 
to come here.’ She added that she realized 
that it had a contemptible look to turn to her 
children only when nothing else was left, but 
she wanted them now, and hoped that they 
would forgive her. She also said, quite simply 
and, I think, sincerely, that she ‘had to go.’ ” 

“When will she get here?” cried Mary, still 
clasping and unclasping her hands, still white to 
the lips. 

“Will any one have to go to get her?” de- 
manded Jane. “I’ll go.” 

“Oh, say, couldn’t she take an airship and 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 73 

hurry?” burst out Florimel, her face crimson 
with impatient excitement. 

“If she needs an escort over, I could start 
Saturday, if they’d give me two weeks out of the 
office now, instead of a summer vacation,” added 
Win. 

“She will come with her maid, if you invite 
her,” said Mr. Moulton. “She is not poor; 
Mrs. Garden is really rather a wealthy woman, I 
imagine. It is not because she needs support 
that she wants to come.” 

“Of course not; she needs us, her daughters!” 
cried Mary. 

“And we need her, if only to pet,” Jane sup- 
plemented her. 

“I am bound to tell you one thing, my dears,” 
said Mr. Moulton. “You are free to do pre- 
cisely as you wish in the matter. There were 
some of us who would not accept the responsi- 
bility for you — myself and some of the Gardens — 
unless we were to have it completely. When 
your mother went back to England, leaving 
you here, Florimel still a baby, you know, she 
signed an agreement to relinquish all claim upon 
you and upon this estate. She has no legal 
claim upon you. I am bound to tell you 
that.” 


74 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“As though one remembered law about one’s 
mother!” cried Jane, losing all hold on words. 

“’Specially when she’s lost her voice and needs 
us,” said Florimel. 

“She could not alter things with pen and ink, 
Mr. Moulton,” said sweet Mary. And Mr. 
Moulton drew her to him and kissed her. 

“Such true little girls!” he said. “What’s a 
voice and the public to lose if the loss gains you 
three? ” 


CHAPTER FIVE 


“ SWEET AS ENGLISH AIR COULD MAKE HER ” 

It was long before the Garden household set- 
tled down to sleep that night. 

The girls had walked with Mr. and Mrs. 
Moulton part of the distance toward their home. 
In answer to Florimel’s question, Mr. Moulton 
had said that he was sure that Mrs. Garden 
would be established at home in less than a 
month. When Jane pressed him for a right to 
hope for her coming in less time, he admitted 
that it was quite possible that she would be in 
Vineclad within three weeks, as he meant to 
write to her that night. 

“And tell her not to bring a maid, not unless 
she thinks she can’t possibly get on without her. 
We want to be her maids; please tell her that, 
Mr. Moulton,” Jane implored him. 

“ Very well, Jane. Your mother has undoubt- 
edly been accustomed to a great deal of waiting 
upon; remember that you children may not 
have much leisure this summer for your outdoor 

75 


76 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


pleasures if you do not let your mother have 
her maid,” Mr. Moulton suggested. 

4 ‘Of course we can find one here, later,” said 
Mrs. Moulton, seeing the protest in the three 
pairs of eyes turned upon them. 

“And if you had a mother indoors, one you 
thought was dead, you wouldn’t want to go out 
at all, would you?” cried Florimel. 

“That’s what we all feel,” said Mary. 

44 Why, since I’ve heard she was alive, and 
I’ve got so I could think of it, I’m just hovering 
over my mother!” cried Jane. 44 It’s as though 
my mind fluttered over her, the way birds flutter 
over their nests; it can’t get away.” 

44 It’s curious, isn’t it, when we were so happy 
before and loved one another almost more than 
any other three sisters ever did, that the mo- 
ment you said our mother was alive it was as if 
all our life backward looked empty? We all 
three knew in an instant that we needed some- 
thing terribly,” Mary said thoughtfully. 

Mrs. Moulton glanced at her husband. 44 Be 
prepared, my dears, for not finding your mother 
quite like the mothers you know in Vineclad,” 
she said. 44 She has had slight experience in 
motherhood, and she has been the pet of a large 
public. It is quite possible that you may be 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


77 


called upon to mother her, rather than find her 
knowing how to mother you. But you are all 
three capable of this, each in her way.” 

Then Jane replied with one of her flashing in- 
tuitions: “We’ll mother her until she learns how 
to have daughters.” 

The three Garden girls turned back at this 
point, after Mary had received from Mr. Moul- 
ton instructions for sending Mark Walpole to 
him in the morning, and Mrs. Moulton had 
listened, with her quietly amused smile, to 
Mary’s hints of her discoveries in regard to 
Mark’s tastes. 

“Win and I think he needs watching; he gets 
into day dreams and doesn’t look after himself 
very well,” Mary ended. And the girls bade 
the Moultons good-bye and turned toward home. 

“Such a born little mother as sweet Mary is.” 
said Mrs. Moulton warmly, as she and her hus- 
band watched the slender figures running toward 
home like swift Atalantas. “Such a wonder- 
fully beautiful, clever, and lovable trio! What 
daughters for a real mother to return to! And 
I have none.” 

“Now, Althea, those children are almost 
your own,” said her husband hastily, for he 
never wanted his wife to remember that their 


78 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


one little daughter had lived but a few months. 
“And perhaps Lynette Garden will appreciate 
them. Twelve years is a long time. Lynette 
was no older than Win is now when she went 
away; she must have changed.” 

“She was a pretty little Angora kitten,” 
said Mrs. Moulton, walking on. And her hus- 
band knew that Mrs. Garden’s defence must be 
left to herself when she came. Mary, Jane, and 
Florimel ran into the house and up the stairs 
to the sewing-room, calling: “Anne, Anne!” as 
they came. 

Anne opened the door to them. They saw at 
a glance that she was idle, an almost unprece- 
dented discovery, and her face was darkly 
flushed and swollen with tears. 

“You know!” cried Mary, throwing herself 
into Anne’s open arms. 

“Win told me,” said Anne, holding Mary, 
dearest to her of the sisters, if she had a pref- 
erence. “I have always wondered how this day 
would come, and when.” 

“You knew our mother was alive, and never 
told us!” cried Jane. 

“Janie, I’ve written her at odd times, telling 
her how you got on; she asked me to when she 
went away. What was the use of telling you 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


79 


she was alive? You could not have been with 
her, and you would have fretted after her. 
You might have come not to love her if you 
were wanting her and could not get her to come 
to you, nor take you there. It was better to 
let you grow up contented; Mr. and Mrs. Moul- 
ton were strict in requiring me to keep still. 
But I always knew this day would come. 
She’ll be here soon, my little lady, and what a 
happy time it will be!” Anne poured out her 
words with profound emotion. 

“Oh, Anne, yes! What a happy time it will 
be! WTiat a happy time it is!” cried Mary. 
“We shall have all we can do to get ready for 
her. Do you think the house has to be repa- 
pered? Do we have to get new furniture, do 
you think? And what room shall she have?” 

“You know, Mary, the big south room was 
the room she used to have,” said Anne. “That 
is why I kept it for a guest-room : I thought she’d 
be back one of these days and it would be best 
for her to slip into her old place. You three 
babies were born in that room and there she 
used to rock you, the short time that she had 
you to rock. Florimel she enjoyed but a year. 
I can see her this minute with that black-haired 
midget in her arms, and you and Jane playing 


80 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


beside her; Florimers hair was black and plenty 
from the first! The small room off it was her 
dressing-room.” 

“You’ve often told us, Anne,” said Jane. 
“ Do you think it needs doing over? ” 

“I’d rather the old furniture was there for her 
to see,” said Anne. “Of course the paper she 
had is gone and what’s there is faded. I’ve a 
piece of her wall paper in the garret. Why not 
send it to one of the big dealers in New York 
and see how near he can come to matching it? 
I believe the nearer like the way she found her 
room when the doctor had it ready for her, and 
brought her to it, only three years older than 
her oldest girl is now, the more like that she finds 
it now the less she’ll feel that you three tall 
creatures are not the babies she left behind her.” 

“Oh, dear; I’m so sorry we are so near grown 
up!” sighed Mary. 

“ But she did leave us, and stayed twelve years. 
She can’t expect to find us just learning to walk! ” 
exclaimed Florimel, who was more inclined to 
remember that this fabulous mother had gone 
away from her children than was either of the 
others. 

The next morning Mark went to begin his 
labours with Mr. Moulton. The Garden girls 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


81 


were so interested in his installation that this 
would have been an absorbing event had it not 
been that Jane was in the library, occupied with 
wrapping and addressing a large strip of the 
paper which had been on her mother’s room 
when she came to it, a bride, and Mary and Flor- 
imel were upstairs turning the room topsy- 
turvy, deciding what changes to make in its fur- 
nishing. 

“We’re going to keep this low rocker because 
our mother held us in it when we were babies,” 
Mary announced when Mark came upstairs 
to look for her and say good-bye. “Don’t you 
think it would be fine to have the chairs cush- 
ioned with a very good chintz, to harmonize 
with the wall paper? Do you like that table 
exactly? Are you really going now to Mr. 
Moulton, Mark? Of course you are; I’m dazed. 
Please don’t mind. No, we won’t say good-bye 
here; we’re going down to see you out of the 
door, though of course you will come through 
it nearly every day this summer. But we must 
see you go to seek your fortune, and wish you 
luck. I’ve waked up at last! When you came 
upstairs I couldn’t seem to understand why you 
came, or anything!” 

“I know; you looked right through me, all 


82 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


the way across the ocean to England,” laughed 
Mark. “I didn’t know you could talk so fast, 
Mary! I don’t mind your forgetting me. It’s 
a big thing that’s happened to you, and I’m a 
good deal stirred up, myself, to think you’ve 
found out your mother’s alive and is coming 
back. I know how I’d feel if I could hear my 
mother hadn’t died, though I never knew my 
mother, either. But I knew my father; we 
were chums.” 

“What a nice boy you are, Mark Walpole!” 
said Mary, frankly holding out her hand. “This 
is another bit of luck this spring! I’m glad 
we’ve found you for a friend.” 

“We’ve found him! H’m!” said Florimel, 
with a withering scorn that might have withered 
more effectually if her face had been less dusty 
from rubbing it with hands that had been push- 
ing against backs of pieces of furniture. “I 
guess no one found him but me — in the bulrushes 
down in town! I wish your name was Moses, 
Mark; it would be so funny and fitting.” 

“I believe I’d just as lief have a name that 
isn’t so close a fit to that one incident, Florimel. 
Maybe Mark will fit something else that hap- 
pens to me; it sounds like a name that could 
come in pat,” said Mark. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


83 


“Of course!” cried Florimel. “You’ll dis- 
cover some old weed, or something, in botany, 
and make your mark! But I’d love to call you 
Moses.” 

“You may, Pharaoh’s daughter. I don’t 
mind. But I can’t crave to be called that by 
every one,” said Mark, and turned back at the 
foot of the stairs to put out his hand to Mary. 
“Even if I am going to see you again this eve- 
ning, and nearly every day, I believe the time 
to thank you is when I start out on my own 
hook. I can’t do it,” he said. “You’ve been 
no end good to me, and if I didn’t know that so 
well, I could say it better.” 

“Please never say it nor think it,” said Mary. 
“You came along and the rest of it followed you. 
It did itself. I love to believe everything flows 
along, like little waves, one after another! — 
planned for us, you know.” 

“ Good-bye, Mary Garden. I’d like any plan 
that had you in it,” said Mark hurriedly, as if he 
hated to say it. 

“Mark is nice; he’s gone, Jane,” said Mary, 
coming in to where Jane was busily writing the 
wall paper firm about the paper. 

“Where has he gone?” asked Jane absently, 
and they both laughed. “You can’t expect me 


84 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


to remember such a little thing as Mark’s going 
when our mother is coming,” Jane added. “He’ll 
be here every spare minute, anyway.” 

For two weeks Hollyhock House spun out of 
all likeness to its calm self. The New York 
dealer had furnished a paper for the south bed- 
room that differed only in a small detail from the 
sample which Jane had mailed him. Paper 
hangers, painters, and upholsterers worked stead- 
ily to restore the room to the appearance it had 
worn eighteen years before. The odour of paint 
dominated the early June odours, which crept 
in from the garden, and the bustle, untidiness, 
and confusion of workmen in the house left little 
time or thought for the loveliness which, this 
year, as in all years, the beautiful garden offered 
its young owners. 

But at last the south chamber was done. It 
shone in the whiteness of its new paint, and 
blossomed, a rival to the garden, in its new wall 
paper, with apple blossoms rioting everywhere 
between its floor and ceiling. The low rocker 
in which, seventeen years ago, the girl mother 
had stilled her first baby, Mary, was covered in a 
chintz of browns and greens and pinks, repeated 
on the seats of the other chairs. Delicate cur- 
tains of point d’esprit fluttered from beneath the 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


85 


same shades in raw silk outer curtains. Mary 
had worked steadily, and Jane had helped her, 
to hemstitch new dresser and table covers of the 
finest linen, not because there was not already 
a store of such things in the house, but because 
they were eager to prepare with their own fingers 
these special belongings for their mother’s room. 
When everything was done there followed five 
long-drawn days of waiting. Mr. Moulton had 
received a cablegram that Mrs. Garden had sailed. 
She had asked the children not to meet her. Mr. 
Moulton went alone to New York to be there 
when she arrived and to bring her home. 

Waiting had been hard from the moment that 
the accomplishment of the work in the house 
left nothing more to be done, except to wait. 
After Mr. Moulton had gone it became un- 
bearable. 

“ Suppose she missed the boat!” said Florimel, 
wriggling about in her chair on the piazza. 

Mary and Jane laughed, but Jane said: “To 
tell the truth, I can’t help being scared to death 
for fear there’s been a collision and the ship’s 
sunk.” 

“ We’d hear that at once,” said Mary. “ What 
I’ve been thinking is that she might have been 
taken ill and died on the way over.” 


86 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Well, girls!” remonstrated Win. “I’d never 
have believed you’d have been breaking your 
necks to cross a bridge you hadn’t come to like 
this! It isn’t like you to imagine such catas- 
trophes.” 

“We never had a mother coming home before,” 
Florimel reminded him . “We never had a mother 
anywhere,” added J ane. “It doesn ’t seem possi- 
ble we can have one. ’ ’ 

“If she doesn’t get in to-morrow, the ship will 
be overdue; to-morrow’s the latest date for her. 
When ships are overdue, there’s always some- 
thing wrong, isn’t there, Win?” asked Mary ap- 
prehensively. 

“There’s always something wrong with people 
who worry, when worry is not due, Molly dar- 
ling,” Win reminded her. He had been thinking 
for a moment or two that he saw a carriage 
appear and disappear down the road, revealed 
and concealed by its turns. Now it came into 
sight, approaching. 

“Oh, Mary — Win!” gasped Jane, springing 
out of the hammock where she had been lying, 
so pale that Mary was forced to notice it in the 
midst of her answering excitement. 

“Steady, kids!” murmured Win sympatheti- 
cally, as the carriage stopped at the gate. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


87 


Florimel uttered a queer cry and bolted into 
the house. Mary, as white as Jane, moved for- 
ward as if in a dream, and Jane followed her; 
Win brought up the rear. A lady got out of the 
carriage; neither girl saw her clearly. They 
received an impression of an elusive perfume, 
soft fabrics, a vivid, tender face, and arms en- 
circling them in turn; while a voice, most lovely 
in tone and quality, as soft and hauntingly sweet 
as the fabrics and the fragrance, said with an 
English accent: 

“Oh, not really! I’m going back! Not such 
tall, tall girls my daughters! You make an old 
woman of me on the instant ! Where’s the other 
one? I know Jane by her hair; so you are 
Mary. And Win! Grown up — but you are 
older than the girls; that’s a comfort. Oh, my 
dears, I’m so tired! Do you think you can give 
me tea? I still feel that wretched boat tossing; 
we had a rough crossing. Have you my veil, 
Mr. Moulton? Ah, yes; thanks. Fancy your 
being so grown and so pretty, children! Thank 
goodness, you’re decidedly pretty, though too 
pale. I wonder why America bleaches its girls? ” 

“Our girls are as rosy as you could ask, Mrs. 
Garden,” Mr. Moulton came to the rescue as 
Mrs. Garden’s lovely voice ceased; neither Mary 


88 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


nor Jane had spoken. “They are overwhelmed 
by seeing you. I told you what it meant to 
them to have you return to them from the dead 
— as they thought.” 

“Naturally!” said Mrs. Garden, pressing the 
arm that happened to be nearest to her — Jane’s. 
“And fancy what it means to me to see you 
again, my dears! I should have written you, 
but your guardian and Anne Kennington for- 
bade me. They thought it would make you quite 
too unhappy to be separated from me, knowing 
me alive. I dare say they were right. I posi- 
tively could not have you with me, going about 
as I did. Oh, children, pity your little mother! 
Her voice is gone!” 

“Indeed we are sorry, mother, darling,” said 
Mary, finding her own voice in response to the 
appeal in her mother’s. “But we can’t be as 
sorry as we would like to be because its going 
meant your coming — home.” 

“That’s a nice little speech, Mary,” said her 
mother. “I’m glad you know how to say pretty 
things. It’s a great gift for a woman to say the 
right thing at the right moment.” 

“Mary does not make pretty speeches, Mrs. 
Garden. She says the right thing because she 
feels the right way,” said Win, flushing. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


89 


“How nice! She looks like a darling girl; 
she’s quite as sweet looking as she is pretty,” 
said Mrs. Garden, as though Mary were not 
there. “But, Win, Mrs. Garden? Aren’t you 
half-brother-in-law to me? Why not Lynette?” 

“Yes,” said embarrassed Win. “That’s so!” 

By this time they had come up the path and 
entered the house. At the door stood Anne, 
tears streaming down her face. 

Mrs. Garden flew to her. “You dear crea- 
ture!” she cried. “How glad I am to find you 
waiting for me, exactly where I said good-bye 
to you twelve years ago! And the house looks 
just the same! How strange, when one has 
been living so eagerly as I have, to come back 
and find a place looking as though a day had 
hardly gone by since one left it! But the chil- 
dren spoil that effect! Dear me, Anne, why 
have they grown to be almost young women? 
It’s dismaying. Where is the baby, Florimel? 
The one I named, and who has the only pretty 
name among them, in consequence? She could 
not walk when I left her; can’t she walk now, and 
come to welcome me?” 

“Mel! Florimel, come!” called Jane up the 
stairs, as Florimel emerged, as pale as her sisters, 
from the folds of a portiere. 


90 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Oh, you charming gypsy !” cried her mother, 
taking her into her arms. “You had this same 
raven hair when we first met, and you were an 
hour old. You are nearly as tall as Mary, and 
you are both as tall as if I were decrepit! Isn’t 
it horrible? And at home in England I’ve been 
singing under my maiden name, and quite felt, 
and was treated, like a young Miss Lynette 
Devon! Never mind, my sweethearts, I’ve 
come back to be an old woman, and to let you 
take care of me.” 

“You’ll never be an old woman, and we’ll 
take care of you so that you’ll feel like a whole 
orphan asylum!” cried Florimel, characteristi- 
cally able to express what Mary and Jane felt too 
deeply to utter. 

“You dear funny child! Is there tea, Anne? 
I’m half dead from fatigue. And send a maid 
out to fetch my portmanteau, will you? My 
luggage will be here to-morrow, but I want to go 
right to my room, and get into a loose gown I’ve 
kept with me, just as soon as I’ve had tea,” said 
Mrs. Garden. 

“Win has brought your bag in, mother: I 
slipped out to see,” said Mary. “He’s taken it 
to your room. Abbie is bringing you tea and a 
cracker and some crisp lettuce out of the garden.” 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


91 


“Is that fine garden as good as ever? A 
cracker , my American daughter? We say bis- 
cuit at home. But what a dear little caretaking 
creature you are! I did not like your name; 
I was awfully vexed that the doctor insisted 
on calling you after one of the Gardens — his 
aunt, wasn’t it? I was going to name you 
Elaine; then we both should have been called out 
of the Idyls of the King, you know. But it 
turned out quite right; you’re a genuine English 
Mary, sweet, old-fashioned kind. And my 
pretty Jane — do you know that lovely old tenor 
song? Jane would have been Gwendoline if 
I’d had my way, but she got called after her 
grandmother. I had my way with Elorimel, 
and none other! However, Jane is so brilliant 
and clever looking that Jane is rather nice for 
her; the plain name emphasizes her. Ah, thank 
you — Abbie, did you say, Mary? Thank you, 
Abbie. I’m half dead, and the tea smells 
perfect.” Mrs. Garden accepted the cup which 
Mary poured for her, and the lettuce that Jane 
eagerly served her, also the “biscuit” that Flor- 
imel passed. The three girls hovered around 
her, silent but alert, their pallor now giving way 
to a flooding colour which enhanced the beauty 
of their sparkling eyes. 


92 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“My word!” said their mother, looking from 
one to the other as she sipped her tea. “Am I 
really your mother, my three tall princesses?” 

Anne stood gloating over her lady, whose ab- 
sence she had ceaselessly mourned. Mrs. Gar- 
den’s children had recovered enough by this 
time to see that she was exceedingly slender, 
with a willowy grace of motion that gave her five 
feet two of height the effect of more inches. Her 
face was long and thin, delicately formed. Jane 
was more like her than either of the others, 
though in expression, as in colouring, they were 
unlike. Mrs. Garden’s hair was a light brown, 
her eyes were blue, her nose as pretty as possible, 
straight and fine. Her mouth was small and 
pretty in shape as in expression. Though she 
never could have been as lovely as Mary, for she 
lacked Mary’s earnest eyes and the reposeful 
strength which supplemented her prettiness; 
though Jane and Florimel both far outshone 
her in beauty, yet Mrs. Garden must have been 
at their age a remarkably pretty girl, with a 
childish appeal, and a little manner that de- 
manded and inspired service from all of her 
world. To her children she looked older than 
they had expected to see her, for to the years 
below twenty the lines which nearly forty years 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


93 


must engrave suggest age. But in reality she 
was wonderfully young looking for her age, with 
a faded look of childhood upon her, as if she were 
a little girl that some one had veiled unsuitably, 
and who was overtired. It was easy to under- 
stand that she had attracted people to her all her 
life. The girls, watching her, began to feel her 
charm, and to throb with rapid heartbeats, feel- 
ing it. 

‘‘Now I really must go to my room, children,” 
she announced, rising at last. “I’m quite re- 
freshed; the tea was excellent, my good Abbie. 
Where is Mr. Moulton? I never said a word to 
him when I got here! How rude of me! Yet 
how can one remember one’s manners, meeting 
her three big girls, whom she last saw babies?” 

“Mr. Moulton found Mark coming after him, 
and went home with him,” Anne explained. 
“He bade me tell you, Mrs. Garden, that he 
begged to be excused from wearying you further 
to-night; that he hoped you would find your- 
self rested to-morrow, and that he and Mrs. 
Moulton would come to ask after you in the 
afternoon.” 

“That’s very nice of him, Anne; he seems to 
be nicer than I remembered him. He bored me 
when I was a girl here, but the doctor adored him. 


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Are you going to take your mother up, my trio? ” 
asked Mrs. Garden. 

Mary, Jane, and Florimel eagerly crowded 
around her to escort her upstairs. Mary, re- 
membering that Anne loved her no less, and knew 
her far better, than her own children, turned 
back and invited Anne to come, too, with her 
outstretched hand. 

“What a pity I’m not a triangle!” said Mrs. 
Garden, as her three girls tried to find a place 
next to her simultaneously. “And my room! 
Quite unchanged ! That’s never the same paper, 
Anne? Yet I’m sure it is ! How extraordinary ! ” 

“We tried to match it, mother; Anne had kept 
a piece of the old paper,” Jane explained. “Do 
you think you will like it?” 

“I think I shall like you!” cried Mrs. Gar- 
den, taking the face of each of her girls in turn 
between her cool palms and kissing their fore- 
heads. 

Jane dashed away and, when Mary and Flori- 
mel followed her more slowly, they found her 
tempestuously crying for joy among the pillows 
on her bed, her small feet waving emotionally. 
She sat up when her sisters entered. 

“She’s so pretty, and has such ways, and 
we’re not orphans any longer!” she gasped. 


CHAPTER SIX 


“something between a hindrance 

AND A HELP” 

Mary Garden woke with a start the next 
morning. Her room was filled with the beauti- 
ful light that preceded the sun on a mid- June 
morning, when the days are longest. She could 
not recall for a bewildered instant what it was 
that made her feel such a sense of great posses- 
sion, such flooding joy. Then the chorussing 
birds in the garden below aroused her more 
fully, and she knew! 

“The first day!” she thought, sinking back 
into the pillows, and into the birdsong and trans- 
lucent air, feeling that all beauty flowed around 
her and held her up, that she lay on great joy- 
filled hands which at once gave to her and sus- 
tained her. 

It was not yet four o’clock, so Mary gave her- 
self up for a delicious half-hour to turning over 
the wealth that had come to her; she felt as one 
might whose hands were dripping with unset 

95 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


gems of the purest water. It all lay before her 
— the setting, and learning, and enjoying of this 
strange gift. In that brief time which she had 
spent with her mother on her arrival Mary had 
seen that nothing which they knew of ordinary 
mothers would help the Garden girls to ac- 
quaintance with their own, neither in teaching 
them their duty toward her nor in enjoying her. 
As she lay in thought, gradually Mary’s ecstasy 
in waking merged into a graver sense of re- 
sponsibility that reversed the relationship of 
this new mother and her eldest daughter. Mary 
recalled her mother’s pretty mannerisms, spon- 
taneous yet trained; her dainty appointments, 
her dependence, her appeal, as of one who had 
been accustomed to homage and must have 
it. 

“She has come home because she is cruelly 
wounded; we must remember that every mo- 
ment,” Mary thought, feeling her way. “She 
cared more for her singing, her career, than for 
anything else — yes, anything else!” Mary re- 
peated this to herself sternly. “ We can’t mean 
much to her yet; she doesn’t know us. She 
will miss her old life dreadfully. She will feel 
wretched when she remembers that she cannot 
sing now. We must keep her from thinking of 


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97 


it, but it will rush over her at times, in spite of 
all that we can do. I wonder how girls like us 
can keep her company, not let her get lonely, 
yet not bore her to death? Really, it is going 
to be hard — we must do our best!” Mary 
rebuked her thought for taking a form that 
might be interpreted to mean that the task 
would be hard to the girls : hard , not merely dif- 
ficult. “We shall have a great deal to do!” 
And Mary sprang up and began to dress rapidly, 
as if to be ready to do. This morning she had 
expected to be first in the garden, but, early as it 
was, Jane was already there when she came 
down. 

“I couldn’t sleep, the birds sang so,” Jane 
explained. 

“ And our hearts sang so, Janie,” Mary added. 
“That is what wakened me, though I never 
heard the birds sing as they did this morning, 
nor saw such a sunrise. Do listen to that cat- 
bird! He’s just like a little gray lead pipe, 
pouring out liquid song! Do hear how it bub- 
bles and ripples!” 

Jane tipped back her head till her long, deli- 
cate face was turned skyward, and the mounting 
sun transformed her hair into a part of himself, 
as if he were reflected in a golden shield. 


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“You know you can almost touch heaven 
when you’re so happy, and when you’re un- 
happy it seems too far away to be real. Yet 
some one is always happy, and some one else 
unhappy. If we could remember that, do you 
suppose heaven would always seem near?” 
Jane asked. 

“I don’t know; I suppose so, Janie. I’ve 
never been really unhappy, never more than 
sad, or sorry when our pets die — though that’s 
bad enough! We never had anything to bear 
that we ought to call sorrow. I’m always 
happy,” said Mary. 

“I know you are!” cried Jane. “I’m not. 
It doesn’t need sorrow to make me sorrowful. 
Sometimes I get up in the morning feeling as if 
I couldn’t stand it; nothing special — just stand 
it! I get as blue! Then sometimes I could 
dance on the top of the river, I’m so light- 
hearted! This morning it doesn’t seem as 
though the blue day could come. This is dif- 
ferent; I know what I’m glad about now. It 
feels all warm and lasting.” 

“I suppose — perhaps — we ought not to be 
unhappy over nothing,” said Mary. 

“It’s my hair,” said Jane. “Everything is 
my hair! Mrs. Moulton says ups and downs are 


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99 


part of 6 the red-haired temperament.’ Your 
temperament has brown hair, Molly darling, 
so you’ll have to dye me, if you want to make me 
nice and steady-good.” 

“I don’t want to make you anything that 
changes you, my Janie,” said Mary. “And I 
didn’t mean to preach.” 

“Preach all you want to, Sister Maria Serena; 
I don’t mind preaching when people practise, 
too,” said Jane, pirouetting on the extreme tips 
of her toes. “I came out to see if I could find 
the prettiest rose that ever bloomed for mother’s 
plate at breakfast. I don’t like any of them ex- 
actly. Do you think she ought to have a red, 
or a pink, or a white one, Mary?” 

“Pink,” said Mary instantly. “A long bud, 
just opening. One of us ought to offer to help 
her dress; she’s used to a maid. Perhaps it 
would better be you, Jane. You are cleverer 
with your fingers than I am.” 

“I think I’d be afraid,” said Jane, nervously, 
actually turning a little pale from the thought 
of not performing her task satisfactorily. “But 
I’d love to.” 

“Perhaps she wants to get up now, and is 
afraid of disturbing us,” suggested Mary. “Shall 
we creep up to see if she is awake?” 


100 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


The two girls crept up the stairs and lis- 
tened at their mother’s door. Mary’s shoulder 
jarred the knob and Mrs. Garden called out: 

“ Is some one there? ” 

Softly, as if she had not spoken and might be 
asleep, Mary opened the door barely enough to 
admit, first Jane, then herself. 

“Good morning, mother dear,” Mary said. 
“Have we kept you waiting? Did you want 
to get up and go out in the garden before? ” 

“Before!” cried Mrs. Garden. “Angels and 
ministers of grace defend us! You out and out 
little American aborigine! It can’t be much 
after five o’clock, and you ask me if I have 
wanted to go into the garden earlier ?” 

Mary looked so confused that Jane came to 
her rescue. “You see, mother, we get up at 
this time in summer. It’s far lovelier in 
the garden now even than at sunset, fresher, 
and the birds sing quite differently. When we 
were little we used to play we were Adam and 
Eve, if we got up in time; we called it our ‘new 
garden’ at this hour. We never thought we 
could be Adam and Eve after breakfast.” 

“I’ve no doubt, Jane. In any case, Adam 
and Eve were not in the garden after they had 
eaten. But you see I’ve no desire to play at 


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101 


Adam and Eve! I’ve not the least doubt that 
the garden is charming at dawn — but you see, 
my dears, the dawn is not charming; at least 
not as alluring as my comfortable bed. This 
is a remarkably comfortable bed, by the way. 
What time do you imagine I rise, girls?” asked 
Mrs. Garden. 

Mary shook her head. “It sounds as though 
you meant us to guess a shocking hour, mother 
dear,” she said. 

“Not nearly as shocking as five o’clock, Mary 
dear,” retorted her mother. “At home I have 
tea and rolls in bed, and come down about noon.” 

“Mercy! The day is just half gone then!” 
cried Jane. 

“Not if one sings till nearly midnight and has 
supper after that, or dances, or entertains her 
friends,” said Mrs. Garden. “Oh, my heart, 
my heart! And now I sing no more! Girls, I 
can’t believe it! It is like a horrid dream. I 
waken trying to sing, or else I waken, to cry 
and cry, from a dream that I am singing again 
and the audience are clapping, clapping me, 
crying: ‘Bravo, linnet!’ They called me ‘the 
linnet’ at home, because my name was Lyn- 
ette, and they loved my singing. Oh, me, oh, 
me ! ” She sank back with her face turned to her 


102 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


pillow; her daughters saw her delicate body 
heave with sobs. Mary and Jane exchanged 
looks of distress. 

“I think I can understand how hard it is, 
mother,” Jane said, timidly kneeling beside the 
bed and touching one slender shoulder. “But 
maybe your voice will come back. Everything 
grows in our lovely garden! And we mean to 
take such care of you! Won’t you get used to 
us, and think it isn’t so very bad not to hear 
applause, when your three girls are admiring 
you as hard as they can?” she whispered. 

“And how would you like to get up this one 
morning and come out with us, just to see the 
garden with the dew on it, and hear the birds? ” 
Mary pleaded, following Jane and stroking her 
mother’s hair with the hand that had been en- 
dowed with beauty and a healing touch. “I 
think it would make you feel as though nothing 
on earth mattered — for a while, at least. And 
you should have coffee out there, and rolls, or tea, 
if that’s what you like better. You’d love to be the 
birds’ audience this time, little clever mother.” 

Mrs. Garden turned and looked up at them 
with a quick movement and a laugh, though 
tears wet her cheeks; it was like one of Jane’s 
swift changes. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


103 


“What wheedlers! And what determina- 
tion!” she cried. “Very well, then, I’ll give 
in, and do the unheard-of: get up before six in 
the morning and go outdoors! Only wait till I 
write my English friends what little monsters 
I found over here, ready to drag me to torture! 
You two will have to be my maids and help me 
dress. I’m the most helpless creature, and you 
wouldn’t let me bring a maid over. I give you 
due notice: I’m going to get one here!” 

“You shall have three, mother, if you like! 
First try us, and see if we can’t hook, and but- 
ton, and brush you ! We want to so dreadfully !” 
cried Jane. “That would be three, counting 
Florimel, though that wasn’t what I meant.” 
She dropped on her knees again, and began put- 
ting on her mother’s stockings and shoes, while 
Mary busied herself with sorting out the hair- 
pins and small belongings on the dressing-table. 

Both girls had become painfully shy and awk- 
ward, plainly trying to conquer it and make their 
mother feel, what was true, that they delighted in 
waiting upon her, but were too ill at ease to reveal 
their pleasure. Mrs. Garden, on the contrary, 
grew merry and playful. She had decided that 
the adventure of rising at what she called “the 
middle of the night” was wholly funny, and she 


104 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


chattered and laughed throughout her dressing, 
without a hint of her former sadness. 

Florimel added herself to the other two “ Abi- 
gails,” as Mrs. Garden called her lady’s maids, 
and claimed for her share of the service her 
mother’s pretty light-brown hair. “It’s aw- 
fully soft and fluffy,” said Florimel admiringly. 
“Is it the shampoo?” 

“Eggs, my dear,” said her mother. “The 
last maid I had would use nothing else. You 
don’t imagine that’s why I get up with the 
chickens — that the eggs have gone to my head, 
in another sense?” 

“Perhaps you recited Chantecler; did you, 
mother?” suggested Mary. “You did recite, 
as well as sing, didn’t you?” 

“Oh, dear me, yes, but nothing of that sort! 
Child things. They say I can speak like a little 
girl. And then I wore the most ravishing little 
blue frock, and a captivating white pinafore. 
They say I actually looked a child. I’ll do it 
for you some day. But what I love best to do 
is imitations. I’ll do them all for you. My 
voice lets me recite for a short time,” said Mrs. 
Garden eagerly. 

“I should think, if it wasn’t strong — it sounds 
clear and full when you talk — but if it got a 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


105 


little tired I’d think you would sound more like 
a child than ever,” Jane said. 

‘‘What an understanding child you are, 
Janie!” her mother said, bringing Jane’s quick 
colour to her cheeks. “Really, I think we four 
shall get on quite nicely, don’t you? Only you 
don’t seem in the least like my daughters. Over 
there I was treated like a girl, myself.” 

“Of course,” said Florimel decidedly. “I 
think it’s more than likely we shall treat you like 
a girl, too, when we get acquainted.” 

“Now I’m ready. Dear me, don’t you wear 
gloves in the garden? Nor garden hats? How 
frightful! Why, you’ll be like — what’s that 
little song I used as an encore? ‘Three Little 
Chestnuts up from the Country?’ That’s it! 
You’ll be three little brown chestnuts by autumn. 
Let me see your hands. Of course! Quite 
tanned, and it’s only June! You have beauti- 
ful hands, Mary! I hadn’t noticed them. 
Jane’s are pretty, slender, and graceful; Flori- 
mel’s are very well, but yours are beautiful, 
Mary. I think I’ve never seen nicer hands.” 

“Thank you, mother,” said Mary, hiding them 
in her sleeves. “I hope they’ll be able to do 
things for you.” 

“That’s precisely the sort they look to be, my 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


dear,” returned her mother. “Now, if you’re 
ready, children, we may as well go out and see 
whether the early birds have caught the worms! 
Dear me, I hope they’ve made away with the 
caterpillars ! The worst of gardens is that while 
the flowers are delightful, the insects are simply 
maddening.” 

The girls received a new impression of the 
garden when their mother came into it. To 
them it had always been their best-loved friend, 
awaiting them, laden with gifts, if they neg- 
lected it, which rarely happened. But Mrs. 
Garden did not regard it as wholly trustworthy. 
She did not plunge carelessly into its welcome, 
as her children did. Florimel was dispatched 
for a rug to guard her feet from dampness; Jane 
was sent back to get a down cushion to ease and 
protect her shoulders; Mary was set to testing 
currents of air, to determine where the least 
draught blew. Altogether it suddenly was ap- 
parent to the girls that going into the garden in 
the morning was not the simple thing they had 
thought it. Yet this frail “English bit of 
motherwort,” as Mary called her, was de- 
lighted with the garden, the birdsong, the sun- 
shine, and the fragrances, after she was made 
comfortable and safe. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


107 


Mary ran away to prepare coffee for her, Mrs. 
Garden having decided “to become a real Amer- 
ican,” she said, and break her fast with coffee, 
foregoing tea. But Anne had forestalled Mary. 
She had ready a delicious potful of the perfect 
coffee which was the pride of that household, 
and a tray filled with silver cups and saucers, 
cream and sugar, snowy rolls and golden butter, 
and another supplementary tray with a great 
bubble of a cut glass bowl filled with late straw- 
berries, and the small translucent dishes in which 
to serve them. 

“Oh, Anne, she must be happy here!” cried 
Mary, seeing these preparations. 

“Don’t worry, Mary; she will be. She’s like 
a child, easily disturbed, easily pleased,” said 
Anne. “She hasn’t changed in the least. I 
knew you’d have to have something of this sort. 
Run back, dear child, and get out a small table 
and call Win down. Then I’ll have Abbie help 
me with these trays.” 

“Isn’t it lovely, Anne?” Mary exclaimed, 
flying on her errands. 

Win needed no calling; he met Mary in the 
hall. “I’ll take this, Molly,” he said, prevent- 
ing her attempt to carry out an old-fashioned 
work table, whose drop-leaves could be raised 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


for extra space. “Why are you carrying off the 
furniture? And why not get a van, if we’re 
moving?” 

“Breakfast in the garden, silly Win!” Mary 
panted. “Mother is out there! She is liking 
it, I think.” 

Win controlled his strong desire to suggest 
that she ought to like it. He had a very young 
man’s intolerance of a dependent and petted 
woman, and he resented his sister-in-law’s for- 
saking her little girls. Nevertheless, he made 
himself an acquisition to this garden party in 
the early morning, set up the table, brought 
chairs, helped with the trays, while Jane and 
Florimel arranged a wreath of Bleeding Heart 
around the table edge, and laid a rose at each 
place, and Mary stuck a branch of fragrant 
“syringa,” the mock orange, in the back of each 
chair. 

Mrs. Garden grew animated and childishly 
happy watching these preparations. “Isn’t it 
nice? Isn’t it delightful? ” she repeated. “Quite 
like a garden party. I think I shall love it 
here. I didn’t remember it was so nice. But 
then I was only a girl and there were no other 
girls with me. Now I have three girls and a 
fine gallant to keep me company; that explains 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


109 


the difference. Couldn’t you possibly find a 
little name for me that would be suitable, yet 
not so solemn as mother, girls? Somehow I 
think I’ll never get used to being called mother.” 

“And it’s so lovely!” Jane exclaimed before 
she thought, then could have bitten her tongue 
out for having spoken. Instantly she felt that 
this request summed up the situation : they must 
think of this pretty creature as something else 
than mother, something that expressed their 
protection for her, not implying dependence upon 
her. 

“I’ve been thinking mother didn’t suit,” said 
Florimel, with her usual candour. “Would 
Madrina do? Madre is mother, and ina is a 
Tittle’-whatever-it’s-put-to, isn’t it? That calls 
you our little mother, like the sort of a toy 
mother you’ll be, I guess.” 

“Toy mother! Oh, Florimel! But perhaps 
that’s what I am,” laughed Mrs. Garden. 

“Mother sounds less serious in French and 
Italian than it does in German and English,” 
said Jane. 

“Do you know languages, children?” asked 
Mrs. Garden. 

“Not even one, though we can make ourselves 
understood in English,” Mary said. 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“I know a good deal of German and French, 
and Italian I really know quite well. I must 
begin to read with you, regularly, this summer. 
I don’t want to be only a hindrance to you 
girls; I want to be a help, too,” Mrs. Garden 
said with a pretty appealing eagerness. 

“No fear of that ! And, anyway, aren’t people 
the best kind of help when you can do for them? 
Let me give you these tremendous strawberries; 
I’ve been picking out some bouncing ones for 
you,” Mary urged, unconsciously illustrating 
the truth of the first part of her answer to this 
“toy mother.” 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


“’tis just like a summer bird cage in a 
garden” 

“Are you girls always as good as this?” asked 
Mrs. Garden on the third day after her arrival. 
Her tone expressed something akin to despair. 

“Don’t you ever frolic, do anything young, 
perhaps something you ought not to do? You’re 
like my grandmothers.” 

Mary and Jane laughed, glancing at each 
other. 

“We’re being good purposely, you know,” 
said Jane. “It isn’t an accident.” 

“Very likely Florimel is in mischief this min- 
ute,” Mary added consolingly. “She’s always 
likely to be, and it’s a good while since she has 
travelled off a walk.” 

“How did you happen to name Mel that, 
madrina?” asked Jane. “Nobody else has that 
name.” 

“I thought it pretty. The Gardens named 
you two; it was my turn to name a baby. Flori 
in 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


has something to do with flowers, and mel is 
Latin for honey, isn’t it? I thought it com- 
bined prettily with Garden. It’s in Spenser’s 
‘Fairy Queen,’” Mrs. Garden replied. 

“Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen!’” Jane’s repetition 
expressed surprise. 

“Oh, I never read it,” her mother cried hastily. 
“It’s far too long and old-time English to read, 
but I found out Florimel was in that poem. I 
always liked to feel that nice books were around 
me, and to hear them alluded to, but nobody but 
a teacher of English literature, I should fancy, 
would read Spenser.” 

Mary tipped her head back and laughed with 
great enjoyment. “You’re such a funny little 
personage, Mrs. Garden! You often say what 
other people think, but don’t dare to say,” she 
cried. 

“Oh, well, that’s one advantage in having a 
career all your own; one doesn’t have to bother 
about what other people do. I was a singer 
and entertainer; I never had to read books to 
talk about them, you see. Lots of people read 
what they think they ought to read; I always 
read exactly what I wanted to read, and let the 
rest go,? explained Mrs. Garden frankly. “Don’t 
you know any young people? No girls come 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


113 


here, no boys, except that nice young secretary 
of Mr. Moulton’s, whom you say Florimel found 
along the wayside — like a flower! Are your 
friends keeping away from me? Because I wish 
they wouldn’t! Of course I’ve been having just 
the rest I needed since I came, but it might be 
— don’t you think? — the least bit dull to go on 
forever this way. I remember I found Vineclad 
overwhelmingly dull when I lived here. Aren’t 
there any pleasant people who will call on me, 
older than you are, but not so elderly, so sedately 
elderly as Mr. and Mrs. Moulton?” Mrs. Gar- 
den gave her daughters a glance like a naughty 
child venturing on mild disrespect to her elders. 
More than ever the relation between this mother 
and her children seemed to be reversed, as Mary 
received the glance and its suggestion with pre- 
cisely that anxious air of helplessness so many 
mothers wear when their children threaten to 
prove difficult. 

“Why, yes, mother dear, there are a good 
many young people in Vineclad who come to 
see us,” she replied. “They are letting us have 
you all to ourselves at first, you know. We 
don’t know them as we should have known them 
if Mr. Moulton had not been obliged to carry 
out father’s ideas of education. Girls who are 


114 HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 

taught at home are a little separated from the 
young people in school. But we see a good deal 
of the Vineclad girls and boys. And you will 
have lots of callers, of course, after people think 
you are ready for them. I don’t know whether 
or not Vineclad is dull. I suppose it is, when 
you think about it and have lived somewhere 
else. But there are lovely people here. Didn’t 
you know some you liked twelve years ago? 
They’d be here now, I’m sure.” 

“So am I sure of it! I fancy Vineclad people 
are rooted!” laughed her mother. 

“They used to call on me; perfectly nice 
creatures, but — Mary, they used to want to 
teach me stitches and recipes because I was so 
young! And that was precisely why stitches 
and recipes did not interest me!” 

“I think I like them.” Mary looked apolo- 
getic. 

“Because you are a little old lady! And I 
wasn’t — and am not!” cried Mrs. Garden. 

“ I don’t like them, either ! ” cried Jane. “ But 
Mary loves fun, madrina. You see she hasn’t 
been thinking of anything but getting you well.” 

“Surely I see,” returned Mrs. Garden, with 
the smile that always made new applause burst 
forth when she acknowledged applause from her 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


115 


audiences. “If you three little grandmothers 
of mine hadn’t so far succeeded in getting me 
well, I suppose I should be quite content to sun 

myself in the garden, like a lizard. But Yet 

it’s really very charming here in this garden 
and house! When my boxes get here I shall 
have no end of things to show you. You’ve no 
notion of the scrapbooks I’m bringing, with my 
programmes and press notices in them, and I’m 
afraid there’ll be so many photographs of me 
you’ll be impatient of them. But one’s press 
agent demands constant sittings.” 

“It .must seem dreadfully dull, madrina,” said 
Mary, rising with a line between her clouded 
eyes. “Only wait! I should think you could 
wake Vineclad when you feel stronger. Per- 
haps it won’t be so hard on you by and by. 
Poor little singing linnet! Much as I love to 
have you for my own, I think I’m able to wish it 
had not happened. I can faintly guess how hard 
it is to drop out of all that glory and come home 
to three little crude daughters, whom you don’t 
know and who can’t entertain you. Let me 
shake up that pillow!” 

“You ought rather to shake me, sweet Mary!” 
cried her mother sincerely, not deaf, in spite of 
her regret for what she had lost, to the pathos in 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


this dear girl’s voice, nor blind to the patient, 
self-forgetful depth of her pitying love. “I’ll 
get on. It’s a great thing to find you — each 
what you are.” 

“Well, I know I’d feel like an uprooted plant 
from the king’s garden, dying on a country stone 
wall, if I were in your place!” cried Jane, with an 
explosion that amazed her mother. 

“You are the most like me of the three, Janie,” 
she said. “But I was never the little stick of 
dynamite that you are. I was merely a girl 
that loved her own way of being happy and found 
it. I never cared with the force you do; I liked 
and disliked quietly, and quietly slipped through 
what I disliked and chose what I liked. I still 
like pleasantness; it isn’t particularly pleasant 
to feel too strongly, I fancy; I really never tried 
it. So I mean to enjoy rusting out here in Vine- 
clad with you — somehow! I haven’t found the 
way yet. Don’t look so anxious, Mary sweet- 
heart. How did they happen to call you Mary? 
You are Martha, now, ‘troubled about many 
things.’ No, you’re not! You are precisely 
what we mean when we say Mary!” Mrs. 
Garden lightly swayed herself backward and 
tipped up her face to invite Mary to kiss her, 
which she did, with heart as well as lips, feeling 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


117 


that this exotic must blossom and brighten in 
their garden at any cost. 

Later, in the pantry, Jane came upon Mary 
shaking the lettuce for lunch out of its cold- 
water submersion. She looked up, as Jane came 
in, with such a sober face that Jane shook her, 
lightly, much as she was shaking the lettuce. 

“You look like a frost-bitten Garden,” Jane 
declared, “and there’s no sense!” 

“Suppose we can’t keep her, Janie? If she’s 
unhappy we shall not want to keep her,” Mary 
sighed, dropping a spoonful of mayonnaise on to 
the lettuce as if she said: “Ashes to ashes.” 

“I don’t think she’s so heartless, Mary,” said 
Jane, intending to banish Mary’s anxiety by a 
shock, and certainly succeeding in shocking 
her. 

“Heartless! Oh, Jane!” Mary cried. 

“What else would it be, if she didn’t care 
enough about her own children to stay with them, 
when they were doing their best, too?” main- 
tained Jane. 

“If we had been her own children all along 
it would be different,” Mary suggested. “I’m 
afraid such young girls as we can’t make her 
happy. There’s so much we have to replace.” 

“I think we’re ^pretty nice,” said Jane hon- 


118 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


estly. “Lots of people like girls young; the 
younger the better. Some people prefer babies, 
even. Of course we are not companionable, 
like the people she’s been with, nor entertaining 
that way, but I’d suppose we were interesting 
in another way. Besides, we’re hers ! There 
isn’t any sense in trying to feel as if we were just 
little sugar gingerbread figures! We think Flor- 
imel is so pretty we can’t do a thing, sometimes, 
but watch her. And you like me, and laugh 
at my nonsense. And I know you’re — Mary! 
Often I want to fly off and do things and see 
things myself, but I know all the time I’d fly 
back to you fast enough! I always know that 
and say that, even when I’m craziest. I guess 
nobody could have you around, Mary Garden, 
and feel they had a right to you, and give you 
up, my darling! So what’s the use of worrying 
too much about our cute little toy mother? 
She’ll root in the garden!” 

44 You’re a queer mixture, my Janie,” said 
Mary, looking at Jane with laughter and grati- 
tude in her eyes. 44 Nobody would be ex- 
pected to love us as we love each other, you and 
I! Not that I mean that is part of the queer 
mixture. But you’re as full of impossible 
schemes, and as flighty as the wind, yet you’re 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 119 

really so sensible! More so than I am and I 
seem ” 

“The church steeple and I the weathercock!” 
cried Jane. “So you are, so I am. But you’re 
afraid of hurting somebody’s feelings, if you go 
to bed and think the truth in the dark, where 
nobody can see you, and when everybody thinks 
you’re asleep! I’m not! I think it’s right to 
see straight — then you’re pretty sure to stand 
by people, because you haven’t anything to 
change your mind about. That cute little 
mother ought to be crazy over such a girl as 
you are, Mary, and such a pretty, clever thing 
as Mel ” 

“And such a flame-warm, and flame-clever, 
and flame-beautiful daughter as ” 

“Get the fire extinguisher, Molly!” Jane in- 
terrupted. “You see, after all, you do know 
that our cunning linnet ought to enjoy her young 
birds in this garden! Though I’m sorrier than 
you can be for her to have lost her voice. Some- 
how, I believe I know better than you do what 
that is to her. Molly, did you ever think of it? 
You’re the reliable, house-motherly little soul, 
and I’m the flighty Garden, yet I’m older than 
you are, though I’m not sixteen, and you’re trot- 
ting right up to your eighteenth bend in the road?” 


120 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Mary looked at her a moment, turning this 
statement over in her mind. “You really are, 
in lots of ways. It’s that trick you have of know- 
ing what you don’t know at all,” said Mary, 
after that moment. 

“Hurrah for Mistress Mary and her defini- 
tions! That’s called intuition, Molly!” cried 
Jane. 

To the amazement of both girls their mother 
came hurrying into the dining-room. Her step 
was quick, her face flushed, her whole expression 
and air alert as they had not yet seen it. 

“Oh, girls,” she cried breathlessly, “ where can 
Anne be? Do you think you can do anything? 
There’s a boy in the garden in a frightful way! 
He dashed in at the side gate and quite crumpled 
up before me! He’s wet and besmeared with 
mud; I fancy he’s been rescued from drowning, 
or some one has tried to drown him, and he 
barely made the garden, running away ! I can’t 
leave him there! Come, for pity’s sa.ke! Oh, 
where are Anne and Abbie? Why don’t we 
keep a man about all day?” She wrung her 
hands frantically as she spoke. 

Mary had dashed into the cold closet, back 
of the pantry, and brought out a glass of brandy. 
She snatched up the bottle of household am- 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


121 


monia that stood on the shelf beside the pan- 
try sink, not to take time to go after proper re- 
storative ammonia. Jane had flown to the kit- 
chen and had wrenched Abbie from her steak 
at its critical moment, then had shrieked Anne’s 
name until she had heard and had almost fallen 
downstairs, recognizing the cry as announcing 
danger. 

Mrs. Garden led the way, as light of foot and 
fleet as her children. Mary and Jane followed 
and Anne behind them, not able to move as 
quickly as the rest. A little in arrear of the 
other four lumbered Abbie, whose joints were 
refractory, carrying a pail of water and a glass, 
also a large palm leaf fan. 

A short distance from the chair in which the 
girls had left their mother lay a boy of childish 
build. A gray felt sombrero hat covered his 
head; he was as wet and muddy as Mrs. Garden 
had described him, but he was able to move for, 
as the rescue party came up, he rolled over on 
his face, having been turned as if to get more 
air, and Jane’s keen eyes saw him pull his hat 
tighter down over his head by the hand far- 
thest from them, slipped up to catch its broad 
brim. The lad wore grayish knickerbockers 
and a loose flannel shirt that had been white. 


122 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


but the mud with which he was generously 
decorated concealed its original colour and barely 
revealed that his stockings were black and his 
shoes old tan ones. 

“Wait a minute,” said Jane, thinking that 
there was something familiar in the boy’s droop- 
ing shoulders and build. She put out her hands 
to check Mary, who, overflowing with sympathy, 
was hastening to lift the lad and pour between 
his cold lips a little of the brandy which she 
carried. “Wait a minute, Anne; let mother turn 
him over.” 

Mary stopped, but looked at Jane, astonished. 
Anne gave her a sharp glance. 

“All right, Jane; I think maybe it would be 
better,” Anne said. 

“Oh, I don’t want to touch him! I never 
could bear to do anything of this sort!” shud- 
dered Mrs. Garden. 

She went up to the boy, nevertheless, and 
shrinkingly took him by the two dryest spots 
that she could select on his shoulders and turned 
him. He resisted her and made the turning 
unexpectedly hard, considering that he had fallen 
as he lay when he had entered, as if his last 
drop of strength had been drained. Pulling 
him over, Mrs. Garden fell back with a cry. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


123 


“Florimel! Florimel, you little wretch! 
Whatever is wrong with you? Why are you 
in such clothes?” she gasped. 

Florimel lay on her back, the hot sunshine 
of noon streaming down on her mischievous 
face. Her black hair, shaken loose by her move- 
ment, tumbled about her from the sombrero 
covering it. Her eyes danced, her red cheeks 
dimpled, and her teeth gleamed as she lay, 
laughing till she could not speak, ripples and 
chuckles shaking her, the picture of supreme en- 
joyment. 

“You handsome imp!” cried her mother, as 
if she could not help it. “You frightened me 
almost out of my life. I never dreamed it was 
you. Whatever did you do it for? ” 

“That’s why: to scare you,” said Florimel, 
lying still, in no hurry to get up, nor having 
much breath with which to do so. “I was 
watching you this morning and I thought 
you looked dull; I thought, maybe, you’d like 
to have something happen. Whenever we get 
to feeling that way it’s up to Jane or me to start 
something. I knew Jane wouldn’t dare, not 
for you, yet, so I did. Got these things down 
at Allie Ives’, her brother Phil’s, you know.” 
Florimel turned her brilliant eyes on her sisters. 


124 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


expecting them to recognize Phil Ives. “Allie 
and I muddied them up — Mrs. Ives didn’t 
care, Phil’s outgrown them — and we turned the 
hose on me; I never take cold, Anne knows it! 
Then I ran home, by the back way, and tumbled 
in here! I thought it would scare you! It did, 
didn’t it? ” Florimel pleadingly asked her mother, 
desiring to hear again of her complete success. 

“ Certainly it did, dreadfully.” Mrs. Garden’s 
tone was satisfactory to Florimel. 

“Didn’t any one see you coming home, Flori- 
mel? What would they think!” 

“That’s all right, little motherkins,” cried 
Florimel, jumping up and displaying her cos- 
tume, with its muddy wetness, to such a ridicu- 
lous effect that there was no scolding her, for 
it was funny. “I didn’t meet any one but the 
Episcopalian minister, and he loves nonsense, 
and the grocer’s boy, and he grinned; he loved 
it! And an old funny woman down the street 
who is too nearsighted to see I wasn’t some 
boy — unless Chum gave me away, but I guess 
she doesn’t know Chum! Anyhow, people all 
know we’re the Garden girls, and Vineclad al- 
ways looks up to Gardens, so it doesn’t matter. 
Besides, they expect me to cut up; I always do 
— and Mary never! It’s all right, mothery. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


125 


Do you like me better as a boy? I do. Why 
didn’t you let the baby be a boy, little mother? 
When you had two girls, and she’d have loved 
so to have been one?” 

“Did you actually do this because you wanted 
to entertain me?” asked Mrs. Garden, looking 
as helpless as she felt, laughing, yet puzzled by 
this prank. 

“You and me,” said Florimel honestly. “I’d 
got tired of being so steady ever since you came. 
I’m always getting into scrapes; I thought it was 
time you got acquainted with the real me — not 
that this is a scrape! But honest and true, I 
did think you looked as if it was time something 
shook you up, little lady-mother.” 

“I felt that,” Mrs. Garden acknowledged. 
“But, really, Florimel, I hope you won’t feel 
obliged to go to extremes to enliven me ! 
Oughtn’t she get off those wet clothes, Mary; 
oughtn’t she, Anne? Do you really think it 
won’t make her ill?” 

“She’s proof against illness, or she’d have been 
buried ten years ago,” said Anne. “She’s as 
healthy as a ragamuffin — which she looks like! 
Of course you must go and dress, Florimel! 
Did you leave your frock at Allie’s? Lunch is 
almost ready, too.” 


126 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Oh, Jerusalem Halifax Goshen! My steak, 
my steak! You abominable, desolating Flori- 
mel, if it’s burnt!” screamed Abbie, dropping 
her pail, with the glass now floating on its sur- 
face, and ambling toward the house, her big 
palm leaf fan making her look like a large insect 
with one disabled wing. 

“If Florimel sees that you need entertaining, 
I think we’d better give a tea for you, and invite 
Vineclad to make your acquaintance, madrina,” 
said Mary, offering her mother her arm for sup- 
port from the garden to the house after the 
shock of Florimel’s invasion. 

Mrs. Garden slipped her hand into Mary’s 
arm and shook it delightedly. “If only you 
would!” she cried. “I’ve been wishing you 
would, but I didn’t like to suggest it. Why not 
a garden party? I have the loveliest gown for 
it you ever saw in all your life, and a hat that 
shades my face just enough! They told me it 
made me look less than twenty-five! I wore it 
at home in England. But only once, girls; 
think of it! Do give me a party! I never 
wore that delicious costume except to the fete 
champetre which dear Lady Hermione gave 
when Balindale came of age. You know Lord 
Balindale is not yet twenty-two, and this was 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


127 


his twenty-first birthday, last September. The 
gown isn’t in the least out of style. How lovely 
you are, Mary, to have thought of this!” 

Mary stopped short in their slow progress 
house ward. She looked at her mother, and 
then at Jane aghast. “Oh, little mother,” 
she cried, “what are we to do! Here you’ve 
been playing with countesses and having com- 
ing-of-age parties, precisely like an English 
story, and we’ve nothing in the least splendid 
to give you here! The greatest personages in 
all Vineclad and its neighbourhood are Mrs. 
Dean, the widow of the founder of the college; 
the various ministers’ wives, and the doctors’ 
and lawyers’ families, and the bank families; 
and a retired author, who is really very nice, but 
doesn’t care to go out a great deal; and Mr. and 
Mrs. Moulton ! And is Lord Balindale an earl? ” 

“Certainly he is, but one doesn’t expect earls 
in a republic. Americans are quite as nice in 
manners and as clever as titled people — provided 
they are nice Americans — though, as a rule, their 
voices are not as good! Of course one doesn’t 
expect much in a small country place! But 
pray give the party, Mary! At least I can 
wear my gown, and it will be something to think 
about!” begged Mrs. Garden. 


128 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Of course, if you want it,” Mary hesitated, 
but Jane cried: 

“That’s the idea; it will be an excuse for 
dressing up, and being nice yourself! I always 
imagined parties were things to dress up for 
more than they were to enjoy. All I ever went 
to were, anyway! We’ll have a lovely garden 
party, little madrina, if only because you’ll be 
lovely at it!” 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


“and add to these retired leisure, 

THAT IN TRIM GARDENS TAKES HIS PLEASURE” 

Mary and Win were walking slowly over to 
Mr. and Mrs. Moulton’s, discussing the coming 
party with immense seriousness, at least on 
Mary’s part. Win could not be induced to re- 
gard it as of as much importance as she did. 

“Mary,” he said, “it’s precisely here: you 
give a party; you do your best to make it a 
pleasant party, to both sides, hosts and invited; 
you either succeed, or you don’t — most likely 
you neither quite succeed nor quite fail. And 
when the next full moon comes around it won’t 
make tuppence worth of difference how it came 
out. That’s the way I look at it, and it’s the 
right way to look at it, not because it’s my way, 
but because it is! This won’t be different from 
all other Vineclad parties.” 

“Mercy, yes, it will!” cried Mary. “Mother 
hasn’t been at the others.” 

“Not since you remember parties, nor I, for 

129 


130 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


that matter, but she has been here,” said Win. 
“She knows what to expect, and if Vineclad 
doesn’t remember her, all the better for Vine- 
clad. It ought to be an interesting party to the 
town, because it has her to wonder over be- 
forehand, and to see at the time. Your guests 
are sure to enjoy it. Whether Lynette does, 
what she’ll think of it, I don’t know.” 

“But I can guess,” sighed Mary. Then they 
both laughed. 

“Mary’s come to be braced up, Mrs. Moul- 
ton,” announced Win, when they had been 
greeted by both Mr. and Mrs. Moulton, and 
after Mark Walpole, with a shining, joyous face, 
had brought for Mary the low chair she liked, 
and placed it beside her guardian. 

“It’s pleasanter within to-night, my dear,” 
Mrs. Moulton said. “I think there’s a heavy 
dew. What is wrong, child, that you need 
bracing?” 

“Nothing wrong, Mrs. Moulton, and I need 
encouraging, not really bracing; that’s Win’s 
exaggeration. I — we’ve got to give a party.” 

“Dear me, why?” asked Mr. Moulton. “Are 
you coming out, Mary?” 

“No, sir; never, I imagine,” said Mary. “I’m 
out, or I never shall be out; I don’t know which 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


131 


it is. We children were born knowing every- 
body in old Vineclad, so there’s no society for us 
to be introduced to; we’ve been asked to places 
with you ever since we could walk. But mother 
is getting restless; she needs amusing. We 
have to give a party, a tea — no, a garden party; 
to get her introduced to her neighbours.” 

“I see! Why should that afflict you. Mis- 
tress Mary?” asked Mr. Moulton. 

“Everything is so turned about!” cried Mary. 
“We’ve got to invite people to meet our mother. 
Who ever heard of girls doing that? And — do 
you suppose we can make it a nice party? And 
isn’t it ridiculous for us to ask people? Yet 
mother doesn’t want to, because no one has 
yet called on her — except you, and you are our 
own! Wouldn’t it be better if you sent out the 
invitations, Mrs. Moulton?” 

“I invite people to your house to meet your 
mother, my dear? Hardly! Send your in- 
vitations and don’t worry. I see you are 
afraid that Vineclad society may bore your 
mother. There is a consolation in Vineclad, as 
there is almost always a good side to a draw- 
back! If Vineclad is dull it is because it is so 
small and old-fashioned, and, for that very 
reason, it will not misunderstand you, nor be 


132 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


critical of the peculiarities of your party. I 
think you may safely count upon a pleasant 
afternoon, my dear,” Mrs. Moulton reassured 
her. 

“ Mother has a beautiful gown for a garden 
party, which she wants to wear. She has worn 
it but once, to Lord Balindale’s coming-of-age 
celebration, in England. He’s an earl, Mrs. 
Moulton! And for the second time she is to 
wear it here. Doesn’t it sound rather awful?” 
Mary asked. 

“I haven’t heard a description of it, Mary,” 
said Mrs. Moulton dryly. “I doubt that your 
mother would have an awful gown. Of course 
you can’t mean that you are overpowered by 
its having been worn on a superior occasion? 
No good American admits superior occasions — 
at least not titled superiors. And, if it came 
to that, my child, the original Garden bore a 
title and renounced it, when he came here, for 
conscientious reasons. Doesn’t that offset the 
incense of past glories which that gown may 
waft?” 

“Yes, it does. I knew that about the first 
Garden, but I haven’t thought of it for a long 
time,” laughed Mary. “To tell the truth, it 
isn’t the earl’s party in itself that worries me: it’s 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


133 


only that I do so want mother to be happy 
here!” 

“Surely, dear,” said Mr. Moulton gently. 
“Your mother is easily won by kindness. After 
she has fluttered a while, restlessly, she will settle 
down in our blest Garden spot. She is more of 
a child than any one of her children, I think.” 

“So do I!” cried Mary. “I would never 
think of going to her with bothers, as I do to 
you. We all feel that we must protect her, even 
that witch of a Florimel feels it. Then you 
think our party will be all right, and I may go 
on and make out the list of invitations? Will 
you help me with that, Mrs. Moulton? I think 
we ought not to ask a few, as I thought at first. 
I think it would be right to ask everybody we 
know, not just our own set; then mother will 
really be introduced to Vineclad.” 

“Please hand me my fountain pen and a pad, 
Mark,” Mrs. Moulton answered Mary indirectly. 
“We’ll make out our list this instant.” 

For an hour they worked on this task, Mr. 
Moulton and Win throwing in suggestions 
which Mark saw were absurd, although he did 
not know any of the people discussed, because 
the elder and the younger man twinkled at each 
other in making them, Mary laughed at them, 


134 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


and Mrs. Moulton passed them over with digni- 
fied contempt. 

“That is seventy -five names, Mrs. Moulton,” 
Mary announced, adding up the three pages of 
the pad. “Some of these people won’t come, 
but most of them will. Isn’t that a large party? 
Jane and I counted up a third of those in the 
first place.” 

“Either you must make it small, keep it 
within the circle which the Garden family has 
always moved among, or else you must include 
every one set down here,” said Mrs. Moulton. 
“ Since you are to do this, Mary, I advise making 
it what the Old Campaigner, in the Newcomes, 
called ‘an omnium gatherum.’” 

“With a caterer?” asked Mary. 

“No. With cakes ordered from Mrs. Mills 
and ice cream and thin homemade sandwiches 
and your own coffee, tea, and chocolate. Abbie 
and Anne can manage it. I’ll lend you Violet; 
she is unsurpassed in cooking; her coffee is in- 
describable. But you know that. And you 
know she is like all of her race, ready to do any- 
thing for any one she likes, though quite un- 
reconcilable to those whom she does not fancy. 
And you know she calls you: ‘Dem Gyarden 
blossums!’ Vineclad would be inclined to re- 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


135 


sent a caterer. What are you three to wear?” 
Mrs. Moulton ended with a look of suspicion at 
Mary. 

Mary proved that the suspicion was just by 
the dismay that overspread her face. Then she 
laughed. 

“ Never thought of it; not once!” she cried. 
“But we have something that will do. A white 
dress is best, isn’t it?” 

“I don’t know as to that, but you have not 
‘something that will do!’” said Mrs. Moulton 
firmly. “You are to send for something per- 
fectly new, and perfectly suitable. You must 
live up to the gown that appeared at the earl’s 
majority celebration. White for you, demure 
Mary, but I think pale sea green for Jane, and 
rose colour for Florimel. I shall write to New 
York in the morning to have gowns sent up on 
approval; I have an account at Oldfellow’s. I 
intend to see that you are properly apparelled 
for this introductory festivity.” 

“Althea, I am not sure that I shall approve 
your teaching Mary to be vain,” interposed Mr. 
Moulton. 

“Austin,” his wife retorted, “if nature is not 
strong enough to make a girl of seventeen vain, 
I shall be quite harmless. I suppose I should 


136 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


dislike vanity in our girl, but I sometimes feel 
that I should like to make her know that she was 
worth considering.” 

“Oh, dear Mrs. Moulton!” Mary protested, 
rosy red from her throat to her soft brown hair. 
“No fear of my forgetting Mary Garden.” 

“I see her alluded to in the papers rather 
often,” said Mr. Moulton. “I saw to-day that 
she was singing in London.” 

“Poor real Mary Garden!” sighed Mary, 
pityingly, as she arose to go. “She has to be 
used so much to tease me!” 

“The party’s all arranged, is it?” asked Win, 
also rising. 

“No, indeed; it’s only arranged to be ar- 
ranged!” cried Mary, looking around the grave 
room with the affection she always gave it. 

It was a high-ceiled room, with arched door- 
ways, white wainscoting, an ample unadorned 
fireplace; soft green, patternless paper on the 
walls making an effective background for ex- 
cellent pictures, and its furniture was plain and 
solid, square in outlines, upholstered in dark 
brocade. 

“This room always looks to me as if it had 
never let anything that was not good come into 
it, at least not to stay in it,” she said. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


137 


That is true / 5 Mrs. Moulton confirmed 
her, adding with a look of profound admira- 
tion at her husband: “Mr. Moulton’s father 
built this house and they say Austin is his 
father over again.” 

“I’ll walk with them, if you are not going to 
close the house for a while, Mrs. Moulton / 5 
said Mark, offering Mary the little scarf which 
had slipped from her arm to the floor. There 
was a look in his eyes, as his hand lightly brushed 
Mary’s shoulder, laying the scarf over it, that 
sent the colour flushing to Mrs. Moulton’s brow, 
it so surprised her. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what I should say to 
that!” she exclaimed. Then, as Mark looked 
at her in blank amazement, she recalled herself. 
“Of course, walk over with them, Mark; we 
are not going to bed for an hour or so,” she 
added. 

“They’re awfully good to me, Mary and 
Win,” said Mark, as they went along the street 
made silent by Vineclad’s early bedtime habits. 
“Mr. Moulton is trusting me more and more 
with important bits of his work, and they both 
are treating me as if they considered me some- 
thing besides a snip of a boy whom they were 
paying. I’m having a fine time with them and 


138 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


the botanical work I wanted to do but never 
expected to be able to touch.” 

“Gets better every day, doesn’t it?” cried 
Mary, raising her face to his, glowing with pure 
joy over this fortunate state of things. 

“Every day lovelier than the last!” declared 
Mark, looking into Mary’s unclouded, unsus- 
picious eyes. And Win silently received the im- 
pression which, a little earlier, had startled Mrs. 
Moulton, but of which Mary was as unconscious 
as a crystal is of the rainbow colours playing 
through it. 

In the succeeding days after this call the hours 
sped rapidly, filled with the absorbing topic of 
the garden party and its business. The invita- 
tions were sent out and all but six of them were 
accepted. The gowns sent up from New York 
by the famous house of Oldfellow proved to be 
deliriously attractive. Mary did not hesitate 
a moment, but seized upon a soft white gown, 
so simple in its lines, so exquisite in material, 
design, and workmanship, with its only trimming 
real lace upon its clinging round neck and sleeves, 
that it seemed to have been designed expressly 
for this girl, whose sweetness was of a type that 
forbade ornate decoration. Jane could not de- 
cide between a pale green gown and a pale golden 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


139 


one, either of which made of her brilliant, deli- 
cate beauty a jewel perfectly set. The golden 
gown won the day at last and in it Jane’s red- 
gold tints of hair and eyes became the attributes 
of a sun-maiden. Florimel was offered no 
choice of colour, only of design in various rose 
pinks. Above each one she glowed like a living 
rose. The frock they all voted for her to wear 
was the palest of them all, a shell-like rose colour, 
floating over its own shade. 

Mrs. Garden was in ecstasy; she gained in 
strength on each of these happy days. “I don’t 
care what the party is like, I’m having such fun 
now!” she truthfully declared. 

Mrs. Mills, whose cakes were the correct sup- 
plement to one’s own kitchen limitations in 
Vineclad, sparing the housekeeper the mortifica- 
tion of having recourse to a professional caterer, 
made the best examples of her skill for the Garden 
garden party. Ice cream might be ordered 
from the nearest large town; Vineclad did not 
disapprove of buying ice cream, so for this party 
it was ordered from abroad. But this did not 
release the Garden kitchen from weighty obliga- 
tions and achievements. It was supplemented 
by Violet, Mrs. Moulton’s most competent and 
blackest of cooks, to whom the preparation of 


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the coffee was securely entrusted. Twelve young 
girls, from the nearby industrial school orphanage, 
were engaged to serve the guests. They were to 
be dressed alike, in white waists and skirts, and 
Mrs. Garden pronounced their effect “refreshing 
among the garden foliage and blossoms.” 

Jane dressed her mother’s hair, relieved to 
know that her picturesque hat would more than 
conceal any deficiency in her maid’s skill. The 
gown which had but once before appeared in 
public, and then in an august and distant place, 
was revealed for the first time to the girls; Mrs. 
Garden had refused them a glimpse of it before 
the day. It was of white lace, skirt, waist, and 
coat, lined with white silk, yet touched, with a 
French artist’s skill, with exactly the correct 
effective amount of a wonderful red, like the 
heart of a rare rose. Roses of the same shade 
lay, as if they had fallen, on one side of the lace 
on the hat, and the same marvellous colour 
lined the lace parasol, that added the last touch 
of perfection to the costume. 

“Didn’t that young earl, Lord Balindale, die 
on his twenty-first birthday? I’d expect that 
dress and all to be the end of him,” said Florimel, 
regarding her mother literally with open mouth 
and eyes. 


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141 


“Nice, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Garden, much grat- 
ified by the effect of her magnificence. “No, he 
survived, Florimel. There were other gowns 
there that day which might easily have been as 
fatal as this one. Do you suppose all Vineclad 
will perish off the earth? We’ve asked most of it 
here.” 

“Well, there’s one thing sure, it never in all 
it’s vineclad life saw anything like you, Mrs. 
Lynette Garden, who-can’t-possibly-be-our- 
mother!” declared Jane. 

“Some of our guests will adore you, and some 
of them will detest you; your gown is too mag- 
nificent for a small place like Vineclad to stop 
halfway,” said Mary, displaying her understand- 
ing of small places. “Of course our own friends 
will be in raptures over you,” she added, seeing 
her mother’s face cloud. 

A carpet rug had been spread at one end of the 
lawn side of the garden; on this Mrs. Garden, 
her daughters, and Mrs. Moulton were to stand 
to receive the guests. The invitations had run 
“from five to nine.” This allowed the heat 
of the day to be over when the first guests came, 
and it gave three hours of sunset light to show 
the beauty of the scene at its best, and one hour 
in which the Japanese lanterns, hung from tree 


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to tree throughout the great garden, might 
burn to transform it into fairyland for the close 
of the garden festival. It was funny to see the 
arrival of the guests. Vineclad held certain 
families, like the Moultons and the Gardens 
themselves, which for generations had been 
accustomed to the best society, at home and 
abroad; but the majority of its citizens were the 
average small-town type, upright, good people, 
refined in taste and principles, ambitious to 
grasp opportunity as it was offered to them, but 
wholly inexperienced in the ways and standards 
of a larger, better-equipped world. 

When these women, in their “best dresses,” 
eloquent of the home use of paper patterns, se- 
cure, most of them, in being silk, decorated with 
a fichu of machine-made lace, came up to greet 
the Garden girls and be presented to the princess 
who looked scarcely older than they, and yet was 
introduced to them as “my mother,” their faces 
were a study. The struggle between diffidence, 
pride, and amazement was so easily read that 
Mrs. Garden grew younger every instant, find- 
ing herself once more taking part in a play, and 
the role assigned to her far from easy. 

But Florimel, with her overflowing fun, Mary, 
with her sweetness and tact, beloved as she was 


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143 


by the entire community, high and low, threw 
themselves into the task of entertaining, and 
were seconded by some of their girl friends and 
some older ones, and most of all by Win, who 
knew precisely how to set everybody at ease and 
to make them forget themselves in a laugh. 
Jane never could be at her best in a crowd, so 
she stayed at her post beside her mother, leaving 
the entertaining to the others. 

The people whom Mrs. Garden had known 
when she had lived her brief married life in Vine- 
clad came later than the others and instantly 
Mrs. Garden renewed her slight acquaintance 
with them, chatting and laughing so prettily 
that they were enchanted with her. Jane, close 
at her elbow, made mental notes of how to be a 
social success. 

The refreshments were delicious, the young 
waitresses served them deftly, Anne and Abbie 
directing them, and to their boundless relief, 
the Garden girls saw that all their guests were, 
at last, having a thoroughly good time. Win 
and Mark commanded a selected force of young 
men, or big boys, as one liked better to regard 
them, and lighted the lanterns when the last 
radiance of the beautiful June afterglow faded 
away. Ray by ray the myriad little lights be- 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


gan to gleam over the garden, made more vast, 
and transformed into mystery, by the deep 
shadows waving between these stationary fire- 
flies, swinging with their particoloured shapes in 
all directions. The guests knew that they were 
expected to go, but still lingered, entranced by 
the beauty of the scene which the sunset had 
made lovely beyond words, but which the lan- 
terns now, beneath the stars, revealed in a new 
and more fascinating beauty. 

“If only I could sing! Can’t you start them 
singing, Jane?” whispered Mrs. Garden. 

Always ready to sing, Jane raised her voice, 
and from all over the great garden the chorus 
joined her, till at last, realizing that they were 
exceeding the time limit of their invitations by 
almost an hour, the guests sang the good-night 
song: “Good-night, Ladies,” and melted away. 

With one of her characteristic changes of 
mood the tears ran down Mrs. Garden’s cheeks 
in the shadow of the tree against which she 
leaned, and fell on her glorious gown. She 
could no longer sing; she was so tired; she had 
had a happy time; the garden was full of sweet 
odours, brought out by the night; it was all 
wonderful, mysterious, lovely — and she could 
no longer sing! Mary, quick to see every move- 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


145 


ment of her new, absorbing charge, noted the 
droop of her body and went to her, slipping both 
arms around her mother’s slender waist. 

4 ‘Had a nice time, little madrina? Tired?” 
she asked. 

“I’ve enjoyed it a great deal better than I 
thought I should, I’ve had a nice time, really, 
Mary. And I’m launched in Vineclad society!” 
said Mrs. Garden, with a nervous laugh that to 
Mary’s true ear held in it the suggestion of a 
sob. 

“You’re tired, dearest,” said this mother- 
daughter. “Say good-night to Mr. and Mrs. 
Moulton — they’re still here — and come to bed.” 


CHAPTER NINE 


“ WHOSE YESTERDAYS LOOK BACKWARD 
WITH A SMILE” 

There were two immediate results of the 
garden party. One seemed trivial, but indi- 
rectly brought about important effects. The 
other made immediate difference in the daily 
life of the Garden girls, and seemed to them more 
important than it was. The first result of the 
party was that Mrs. Garden insisted upon em- 
ploying “a whole gardener,” as Florimel put it. 
The old garden was so well established, such a 
large proportion of its lavish bloom came from 
hardy perennials and trim shrubs of generous 
natures, that Mary and Win, who decided such 
questions, had never thought it necessary to 
employ a gardener exclusively for their work, 
but had claimed a sixth of a skilful, but cranky, 
Scot, who gave one day a week to them and to 
five other families. 

The garden party had been damaging to the 
garden in its more vulnerable parts, and now 

146 


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147 


Mrs. Garden, for the first time intervening in 
household arrangements, urged the employment 
of a man who should be all the Gardens’ own — 
and their garden’s own. 

“He might be a person who could also drive 
a car,” she suggested. “I think I shall get a 
car soon.” 

“Oh, madrina, let us be your chauffeuresses ! ” 
Florimel cried, jumping up and down, instantly 
afire. “Jane and I would love to run a car!” 

“But not Mary!” Mary interposed. “I 
wouldn’t be a ‘ chauffeuress’ for anything you 
could offer me.” 

“Mel is right; I’d love it,” said Jane. “Do 
you suppose we could do it, madrina?” 

Their mother regarded them thoughtfully, 
her head on one side, as if the car were waiting 
and the question admitted no delay in answer- 
ing. 

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’m not 
fond of seeing girls do men’s work. Yet you 
two are rather the sort to carry it off well; do 
it well and not have the effect of oversmartness. 
We might make it a success. But that has 
nothing to do with the gardener and his driving; 
you couldn’t look after the car altogether.” 

“Now just imagine sitting up in the front seat. 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


with your hands on the wheel, and stooping over 
to change gears, in that easy way, just as if 
you’d shifted gears for ages!” cried Florimel, 
in irrepressible rapture over the picture. 

“I always thought that I should like to blow 
one of those horns, that sound like sudden hys- 
terics, right behind a fearfully stout man who 
had no idea a car was near,” said Jane, candidly 
acknowledging this naughty-small-boy ambition. 

“How does one get servants in Vineclad?” 
Mrs. Garden persisted, intent upon her new 
idea. “I want a man about the place; we need 
one. Shall we advertise?” 

“I suppose so,” Mary hesitated. “You left 
us Anne, you know, and she has looked after 
everything till Jane and I began to be able to 
help. Mrs. Moulton found Abbie long ago. 
We never had to get any one. I don’t believe 
there are many gardeners in Vineclad — or 
chauffeurs, especially not together! I imagine 
you must advertise in the city.” 

“I’ll put in an advertisement, then I’ll get 
Win to go down and buy the car — I couldn’t 
decide on one myself — and see the men who 
answer the advertisement. It ought to work 
out perfectly,” said Mrs. Garden, more and more 
in love with her plan as it matured. She was 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


149 


quite childish about it, as eagerly anticipating 
her gardener as her car, and perfectly sure, now 
that she had decided upon them, that she must 
not delay an unnecessary hour obtaining them. 

The second result of the garden party was 
that “the Garden girls’ cute mother” became the 
absorbing interest with the other girls of Vine- 
clad. Mrs. Garden’s prettiness, her little ways, 
her poetical name — the girls declared that Lyn- 
ette Garden was the loveliest name that they 
had ever heard — her interesting history and, 
not least, her marvellous costume worn at the 
party, were discussed with unflagging interest 
among the younger generation in Vineclad. 
Mrs. Garden was so wonderfully youthful that 
the girls felt no hesitation in approaching her, 
so her three daughters suddenly found them- 
selves in demand, as never before. 

Elias Garden, LL.D., had held certain peculiar 
theories relative to girls’ education. He held 
them so strongly that, in making his friend 
Austin Moulton their guardian, he had laid 
down the course which must be taken in regard 
to his girls’ training definitely, under such bind- 
ing conditions in his will that there was no 
loophole for Mr. Moulton, nor for their mother, 
had she stayed in Vineclad, to bring them up 


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otherwise than as Mr. Garden had ordained. 
Neither of the girls was to go to any sort of 
school until she was eighteen; then she was to be 
free to choose her career and the preparation 
for it. But, with all the preceding years spent 
outside of special training, it was a question 
whether one of the Garden girls would be pre- 
pared at eighteen to take the required exami- 
nation for entrance in a school suitable to that 
age. Their father had insisted upon certain 
studies for his children, under carefully selected 
masters. Languages the doctor had left for 
more mature study; the ordinary accomplish- 
ments of young girls he had said should be ac- 
quired, or passed over, according to the individ- 
ual talents of the children. But history they 
must learn; philosophy they must read; mathe- 
matics were to be taught them thoroughly, and, 
especially, English literature, and still more 
English literature; and a careful, but not a text- 
bookish grammatical study of the English 
tongue. Astronomy and geology they were to 
read with a competent teacher. The doctor 
had requested that they be made conversant 
with foreign lands, through books of travel, and 
especially that they be given a general knowl- 
edge of great art and music; not to draw, to 


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play, nor to sing, but in such wise that they 
might enjoy other people’s performance and the 
noble pictures, statues, and architecture which 
are the inheritance of the ages. For the rest 
Doctor Garden had amply provided for the 
training of any particular talent that one of his 
girls might develop; these things were obliga- 
tory. 

In consequence of these theories, incumbent 
upon their guardian to carry out, Mary, Jane, 
and Florimel were separated from other girls 
of their age by the insurmountable barriers of 
their different education. Nourished as they 
were upon the great English classics, they knew 
much that girls of their age had not only never 
heard of, but which a great many people, un- 
fortunately, miss throughout their lives. They 
were thoughtful and mature beyond their years 
because their minds were stored with the best of 
the poets, yet they were wholly ignorant of the 
world and knew nothing of what children 
younger than Florimel pick up from one another. 
They were more than anxious to be friendly to 
their contemporaries, and they were liked for 
their wit, their friendliness, their beauty. But 
the other Vineclad girls pronounced the Garden 
girls “queer,” that convenient word, covering 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


what is not clearly perceived, and, with amia- 
bility on both sides, the Garden girls were usually 
left to their own companionship — which, after 
all, they preferred to any other. 

But now the state of things was different. 
The Vineclad girls began to frequent Hollyhock 
House, drawn by the fascination of the charm- 
ing little creature who was the girls’ un- 
expected and unlikely mother, and who had 
been before the public so long, even, it was whis- 
pered, having “sung at court!” Mrs. Garden 
was quick to perceive that she was fast becoming 
an idyl and an idol to the girls. She felt so 
much younger than her years, she was so fond 
of admiration and so accustomed to it, that she 
basked in the adulation of her visitors and be- 
came happier and more contented for having it. 

“The girls are so dear, Mary,” she said. 
“Really, I find them perfectly charming! It 
would never do to say so, but I think Vineclad 
is far nicer in its younger set than in its older 
one. I’m quite happy with the girls, but I find 
their mothers and aunts a little, just a little 
frumpy — please, dear!” 

Mary laughed. “I’ll let you, small madrina; 
don’t be afraid to say it! I’m so glad that the 
girls amuse you! It must be because we’ve got 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 153 

our labels on wrong; we are your mother and 
you are our little girl!” 

“Oh, you're not pokey, Mary; not you, nor 
Jane, nor Florimel; not a bit! You are much 
the cleverest girls here, as you are the prettiest. 
That isn’t prejudice, because even now I can’t 
believe you’re my babies, but it’s a fact!” cried 
Mrs. Garden loyally. “You know I haven’t 
shown you my scrapbooks nor my photographs 
yet. Well, I’m going to have them all brought 
into the garden this afternoon, and Gladys 
Low, Dorothy Bristead, Audrey Dallas, and 
Nanette Hall are coming to see them with you. 
You won’t mind?” 

“Why, mother-girl, of course not! We like 
those girls best,” cried Mary. 

“So do I!” said Mrs. Garden, evidently 
greatly pleased by this unanimous verdict. 
“Wait! I’m going to call up the Moultons and 
ask that nice Mark Walpole to come over. 
Then I’ll call up Win and tell him to come home 
early. Girls always have a better time with 
some boys about, even though there aren’t 
enough to go around! It’s better fun that way, 
once in a while; then one has the fun of seeing 
which of the girls score.” 

“I’m shocked, madrina!” cried Jane, coming 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


in at that moment and swinging her mother’s 
scant hundred and eight pounds off the floor in 
a big hug. “ Needn’t bother with Sherlock- 
Holmes-experimenting on Win! He thinks 
Audrey Dallas beyond scoring, soared right up to 
the top of the column and stayed there!” 

“ Really!” cried Mrs. Garden, pausing with 
the telephone handle in her hand as she was 
about to ring up the Moultons’ number. “I 
didn’t know! W 7 hy didn’t you tell me? I love 
a romance, and Win is a dear boy — always was.” 

“We never thought about it. It’s not a ro- 
mance, yet,” said Jane carelessly. “Win thinks 
she’s the only girl in sight, except us, and we 
don’t count that way. But Audrey’s aiming 
for college, and Win isn’t visible to her naked 
eye; no boy is! He sees her, and no one else, 
when she’s around. ” 

“Audrey may be intent on college, Janie, and 
not courting romance now, but I assure you I 
never saw a girl in my life so interested in intel- 
lectual aims that she could not at least see a 
handsome youth’s admiration, even though she 
would not dally to regard it,” said Mrs. Garden 
wisely. “Central, please give me Mr. Austin 
Moulton, 4-8-2 W 7 illow Street.” 

Florimel had been on the couch, submerged in 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


155 


a book and a box of buttercups, a combination 
that satisfied her, mind and body, for she dearly 
loved the condemned habit of eating while she 
read. Now she raised her head and rolled over 
approvingly. 

“That’s what I always thought, madrina. 
I don’t believe a girl doesn’t feel pleased when 
such a perfect duck of a fellow as our Win thinks 
she’s the cream of the whole dairy! And I’m 
sure she’s as proud as she can be to think she’s 
strong minded enough to go right on thinking 
she’s only thinking of college! I’m only thir- 
teen, but I can see that,” she announced. 

“Just let me order a few thinks, madrina, 
when you’re through with the telephone; Mel 
put all the thinks we had in the house into that 
sentence,” said Jane. 

“Mother can’t hear when they connect her 
if you two keep up that chatter,” suggested 
Mary. “As to being only thirteen, Mellie, 
I’ve an idea that thirteen sees most, because it’s 
so sharply interested in getting facts — especially 
of that sort!” 

“Well, I’m interested in all there is going,” 
said Florimel truthfully, once more plunging into 
her book, which swallowed her up as completely 
and instantly as if she had not emerged from it. 


156 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Mark will come! I’ll tell Win now. Per- 
haps I’d better say who’ll be here, if you think 
he likes to see Audrey,” cried Mrs. Garden glee- 
fully, perfectly happy in the prospect of the 
afternoon before her. 

“Isn’t it lucky our linnet sings over trifles 
as cheerfully as over anything worth chirping 
about?” asked Jane. She and Mary were al- 
ways congratulating each other on their mother’s 
childish lightness of heart. 

The girls came trouping, all together, at a 
little before three in the afternoon. 

“It’s fearfully early to come, Mary,” said 
Dorothy Bristead, as spokesman of the four, 
“but Mrs. Garden told us to come early; she 
had too much to show us to get through in a 
short time. Besides, we couldn’t wait. She 
told us something about the photographs she’s 
going to show us. Are they wonderful?” 

“We haven’t seen them yet,” began Mary, 
then added quickly, seeing that Dorothy looked 
shocked: “Her boxes have been an endless 
time coming; they have been here only four days. 
Mother wanted us to wait until she had every- 
thing arranged in order for us to see. It isn’t 
that we’re not as interested as we can be.” 

“Oh, yes!” breathed Gladys Low fervently. 


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157 


4 ‘She told us about her little girl costumes and 
Snow White and the Easter Bunny! And the 
flower dress! I don’t see how you bear it, girls, 
to have her right in the house, and to know she 
is your mother! I’d be crazy /” 

“It isn’t so bad,” said Florimel, before Mary 
could check her. “Perhaps we’d mind it more 
if she seemed like our mother, but we take care 
of her as if she were a — soap bubble!” 

“Will you call mother, please, Florimel?” 
Mary interposed. “Mel means that we can’t 
help feeling as if some one had sent us something 
frail from England, to be taken care of; not to 
be bothered by us, you know, Gladys.” 

“Of course I know!” Gladys’ assent was al- 
most reverent. “She’s lovely!” 

“So glad to see you, girls!” cried Mrs. Garden, 
floating into the room, in a thin white gown with 
pink ribbons, with a lightness of motion that 
suggested the soap bubble which had occurred 
to Florimel as the most fragile and beautiful 
simile that she could use to describe her mother’s 
delicacy. “I have everything laid out in order 
in the library. It is too warm to enjoy the gar- 
den, and Anne has promised us a little treat after 
you are tired of my pictures.” Mrs. Garden 
laid her hand caressingly on the shoulder of the 


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girl nearest to her. It was Audrey Dallas, who 
reddened with delight, raising her eyes adoringly 
to Mrs. Garden’s deep-blue ones, eyes that were 
bright yet full of appealing pathos. 

Mrs. Garden led the way into the library. 
Tables, the couch, several chairs were stacked 
with photographs and scrapbooks. 

“It must seem queer to you to see so many, 
but, when one is before the public, photographs 
are made constantly of her, and I’ve one of each, 
at least. And I’ve kept my press notices, the 
poems, and all such things written to me. It’s 
great fun; one can’t help feeling as if the whole 
world were one’s personal friend, though it’s 
all nonsense, of course.” Mrs. Garden had 
talked, skimming over her trophies to select her 
point of beginning. Soon she was in full tide 
of joyous reminiscence. Win and Mark came 
in quietly, but nobody noticed them beyond a 
careless glance of welcome. Illustrating her 
stories with a photograph of herself as a street 
sweeper, the White Rabbit, the Easter Bunny, a 
flower, a bird, a little child, in various childish em- 
ployments; young shop girls, dreaming maidens, 
Juliet, Rosalind, endless roles, Mrs. Garden 
related something funny, exciting, or sad that 
had befallen her in each of these characterizations. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


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Her audience laughed till they were weak; or 
quivered, sharing her danger; or were saddened 
by her long-dried tears. The gifted little lady 
herself was in high spirits, reliving her triumphs, 
seeing again, repeated in this young audience 
in her American library, the effects she had pro- 
duced on her mixed audiences in the English 
halls, theatres, and drawing-rooms. Her voice 
was gone, but she hummed for them some of her 
songs, producing by her perfect phrasing, with 
the words, considerable of the effect her singing 
had made. She recited for them, and the girls 
could not contain half their rapture. Her own 
three girls were entranced. Jane was wrought 
up to a frenzy of admiring pride in her. Flori- 
mel could not repress herself and actually cheered 
one number, carried beyond remembrance of con- 
ventions that forbid mad applause of one’s own. 

Mary broke down and actually cried at the 
end of a pretty bit of child pathos. She was 
completely overwhelmed, and a little aghast, 
to discover talent, the like of which her inex- 
perience had never encountered, shut up in her 
own mother’s slender body. She felt, as Gladys 
Low had felt for her, that it was almost past 
bearing to have such a gifted being one’s own 
mother, living under the same roof. 


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Win, first of any one, discovered Anne stand- 
ing with a tray in her hands, which she had for- 
gotten, waiting for the end of a recitation, for- 
getting that she thus was waiting. 

“You lamb!” exclaimed Anne aloud as her 
beloved lady ended. And the words made 
every one, Anne included, laugh, and this brought 
the emotional part of the entertainment to a 
close. 

“But there’s no end more that I know!” ex- 
claimed Mrs. Garden naively, as she took a let- 
tuce sandwich and welcomed her tea. 

“Let me tell you a secret!” said Audrey Dal- 
las, as she, too, accepted a sandwich, but pre- 
ferred the lemonade as the alternative to tea 
which Anne had provided. “A New York 
paper, the Morning Planet , takes items which I 
send it, sometimes, for the Sunday issue.” 

“Audrey! You do! You do!” cried Nan- 
ette Hall, with varying emphasis, but one emo- 
tion of amazement. 

“Sometimes, Nan,” said Audrey, laughing. 
“Will you mind if I write about your having 
come back to America, to Vineclad, where you 
had lived as a bride, and how you had returned 
to your career, leaving your children here? 
And how you were now resting and delighting 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


161 


your friends, as you had delighted thousands 
of the English public? You know how they 
always say those things! And may I say that 
you were known to the world as Miss Lynette 
Devon, your maiden name, but in private were 
Mrs. Elias Garden, the widow of Elias Garden, 
LL.D., a scholar who had lived an exceedingly 
private life in Vineclad, New York? And then 
will you care if I add something about the happi- 
ness your talent gives your neighbours when you 
are kind enough to entertain them? It wouldn’t 
sound like this when I’d written it, you know, 
but this would be the material I’d use. Would 
you mind, dear Mrs. Garden?” 

“Not in the least,” said Mrs. Garden. “It 
would be rather nice of you, Audrey — I can’t 
call you girls Miss; you’re my daughters’ friends, 
you see! Then I’d mail copies of that paper 
over to England, and people would know I still 
lived. The London papers could be got to copy 
it. Oh, girls, sometimes it tears my heart to 
know I’m laid on the shelf!” Tears sprang 
into Mrs. Garden’s eyes and glistened on her 
cheeks. 

“Steady, Lynette,” Win interposed. “Just 
look at the three jam-and-honey pots you found 
on the shelf, waiting you here!” 


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“Oh, I know. Win; I do know, really!” cried 
the artist. “And I’m happy here, truly! But 
they used to applaud me so, and call: ‘Lynette! 
Ah, Lynette, our pet! You can do it, you bet!’ 
from the galleries, don’t you know; the boys! 
And the flowers they sent me and the sweets! 
And it was all as if they liked me, the me 
back of it all, don’t you know! One can’t help 
loving all that. But the girls are dear to 
me, simply dear to me! Indeed I’m grate- 
ful!” 

Mary put her arm around her with the gesture 
she used when she saw that her fragile mother 
was overtired. 

“We don’t ‘like’ you, Lynette, our pet!” 
she whispered. “We love you, as all England 
could never love you.” 

“We don’t send you flowers; we just lay our 
glorious garden at your feet,” said Jane. 

“As to sweets and poems and presents, what’s 
that? Look at us; you’ve got us here,” Florimel 
summed up conclusively. 

“We think you have all Vineclad, Mrs. Gar- 
den,” said Audrey. “We girls are simply crazy 
over you; crazy , that’s all!” 

“Quite enough,” interposed Win heartily, 
tired of this sort of girlish sentimentality. “You 


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163 


all give Mrs. Garden treacle out of a huge 
spoon, the way Mrs. Squeers fed it to the boys 
in the school. I’ll walk with you, Audrey, if 
you’re going home, as I see you’re making ready 
to do. I’ve an errand past your house.” 

“Got it up after you knew Audrey was to 
be here, Win?” asked Florimel. 

“It’s to fetch my shoes, which I left to be 
straightened by the shoemaker last week, Miss,” 
said Win severely. “Not that it would not be 
to my credit if I did provide myself with a reason 
for walking with Audrey.” 

“With any of us, Win,” said Audrey, almost 
too unconsciously to be unconscious. “Of 
course the shoes will wait.” 

Win feigned not to hear this suggestion; he 
departed with the girls, to turn off with Audrey 
at her corner. 

Mark accepted with alacrity an invitation to 
stay to tea. 

“I wonder if Audrey acts like that just to 
make Win want to go all the more? Couldn’t 
make me believe she’s plain stupid! Isn’t it 
fun to watch ’em? When I’m older, if there’s a 
boy in Vineclad — they’re not too plenty, not 
older ones — I’m going to take in everything 
that comes my way,” announced Florimel, 


164 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


cramming a round tea cake into her mouth in 
two bites to free her hands for carrying out 
teacups. 

“You seem to be beginning now, Mel,” Jane 
commented. 


CHAPTER TEN 


“ ’tis beauty calls and glory shows the way ” 

The old-fashioned methods of the law office in 
which Win was reading law, combined with the 
complete lack of such cases as required haste in 
proceeding with them, made it nearly always 
possible for Win to arrange his hours, even 
wholly to be absent at his pleasure. A Vineclad 
law office, the Vineclad law office to be more 
exact, since the Hammersley & Dallas firm was 
supreme in its profession there, would have 
horrified lawyers in a large city, yet the knowl- 
edge of the law which Win was gaining in it 
would be thorough and practical, a fine basis 
for whatever he should choose to build upon it 
when he was older. There was no difficulty, 
therefore, in Win’s taking three days in which 
to go to New York, buy his sister-in-law’s car, 
and select from the applicants who might apply 
for the position of its chauffeur, in answer to her 
advertisement, the one whom his judgment de- 
cided was the most hopeful. 

165 


166 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“ If one of the girls could go 99 Win 

checked himself, but there would not be much 
use in blowing out a match after it had been ap- 
plied to oil. 

Jane and Florimel sprang to their feet, and 
Mary looked up eagerly. 

“But I couldn’t possibly go,” Mary said, in- 
stantly aware of her responsibility as the head of 
the house, and denying her thought’s suggestion. 

“Why not Jane, then?” Win hinted, beginning 
to think that what he had not meant to say was 
worth saying, after all. 

“Well, I’d like to know why not Florimel?” 
demanded that young person. 

“Seniority, my dear, seniority.” Win shook 
his head sadly. “No getting away from the fact 
that you are younger. Besides, Jane has red 
hair.” 

Jane laughed. “It does seem as though that 
ought to win me a consolation prize! Do you 
suppose I could go, really?” 

“Don’t pretend, Janie! You love your hair, 
but then we all do!” said Mary. “Might she 
go, Win? Where would you stay? ” 

“In the park, in the aquarium, in the station 
house, or, at a pinch, in a hotel,” replied Win, 
still unsmiling. “I don’t see why Jane mightn’t 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


167 


go. I’m timid about going alone — you have to 
go under rivers and over houses in New York 
too much to be unprotected.” 

44 Oh, Win, I think you’re lovely!” Jane cried 
rapturously. 

44 So do I, Jane; I’m glad we agree so. We 
ought to have a great trip, having the same 
tastes,” assented Win. 

44 It sounds decided!” Jane exclaimed. 4 4 Is 
it? Do you think it is, Mary? I wouldn’t need 
more than one little gown to wear in the evening 
and some extra shirt waists; just a small suit- 
case.” 

4 4 If we got the car, plus the driver, we might 
— we should come home in it,” observed Win. 

Jane gave a little scream of joy, but Florimel’s 
desire broke bounds. 44 And there’d be plenty 
of room for me, 'plenty /” she cried, choking and 
tripping over her words. 44 It would be a great 
deal more — more proper for Jane and me to be 
walking around the hotel together. Who’d be 
with her when you were seeing cars and men? 
And Jane needs some one sensible! Look at the 
day she went off to see that Miss Aldine! Didn’t 
I go with her, and wasn’t it better? Jane and I 
would have one room, and I’d just as lief eat half 
of what I could eat; it wouldn’t be much more 


168 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


expensive. I’ll use my own money. Why 
couldn’t I go, too? Jane’s only two years older 
than I am. And I’m fully as able to enjoy a 
trip, and really a great deal more sensible.” 

“But altogether too modest, Florimel; it’s a 
pity you don’t see your own good points,” said 
Win mournfully. “It isn’t economy I’m aiming 
at, child. I couldn’t seem to see myself kid- 
napping the Garden baby. If you want to 
come along, and your mother and Mary and 
Anne can spare you both at once, come along. 
I’d be glad to take you both, and Mary, and the 
twin of each of you — if you were twins.” 

“Mary, for goodness’ sake, say quick you 
won’t mind for just three days!” Florimel im- 
plored Mary, on her knees before her, arms 
around Mary’s waist in an instant. 

“I won’t mind for just three days,” repeated 
Mary obediently. “But ” 

“Stop right there!” screamed Florimel, spring- 
ing up and catching Jane in a mad whirl. “Oh, 
Jane, oh, Jane, how do you feel? We’re going 
to New York for an automobile!” Florimel sang 
as she and Jane danced a sort of gallop around 
the room. 

“I want to dance and shriek and purr! We’re 
going to buy a car and chauffeur,” Jane continued 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


169 


the doggerel, on a still higher key, as they 
started off again. 

Mrs. Garden came running downstairs and 
Anne hurried in from the dining-room. 

“What is it? You quite frightened me!” 
gasped Mrs. Garden, leaning against the case- 
ment of the door, her hand at her side, as she 
saw that the girls were at least not sorrowful. 

“I knew it was only Jane or Florimel gone 
stark mad; it’s both of them,” said Anne, with 
the annoyance relief always seems to call forth. 
Florimel and Jane released each other and caught 
their mother into their embrace. 

“Win’s going to let us go w T ith him to get the 
car,” announced Florimel. “Mary says it’s all 

right ” Florimel stopped, hesitated, fell 

back, and looked at her mother doubtfully. 
“You don’t care if we go, do you?” she said 
slowly. “Somehow we never think of asking 
you things like that. We shall after we get you 
looking to us like our mother. You don’t care? 
If we go, I mean?” 

“Of course not. And I’d rather you wouldn’t 
ask me things like that; it would be embarrass- 
ing to betray how little I knew about what was 
best for you,” said Mrs. Garden, half pettishly. 
“I should think it would be very pleasant for you 


170 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


to go — and an awful nuisance to Win to take 
you.” 

“Why, madrina!” said Jane reproachfully. 
“When we’re such good company and Win has 
known us so long! The way we’ve worked for 
that boy and entertained him! He’s the nui- 
sance. I’ve worked over him for years; I’m 
glad that he feels grateful enough to do a little 
for us!” Jane waltzed over to Win and took 
him by the ears and swung his head gently from 
side to side as she hummed and danced a slow 
waltz, in which he had no choice but to follow 
her, captured as he was. 

The result of this sudden resolution on Win’s 
part to escort his almost-contemporaneous nieces 
to New York was that they set out on the second 
day in high glee, accompanied to the station by 
Mr. and Mrs. Moulton, Mrs. Garden, Mary, 
and Anne. Mark also was of the party and in- 
sisted upon carrying their suitcase. 

“I do hope everything will go right,” said 
Mary, as the travellers’ escort walked slowly 
homeward through the vineclad streets, pleas- 
antly shady in the July heat. 

“Oh, Win can’t go wrong, with the car picked 
out at home! If he engages an unsatisfactory 
man, we aren’t obliged to keep him,” said Mrs. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


171 


Garden. “How frightfully warm it is! We 
never have such intemperate heat at home in 
England.” 

Involuntarily Mary’s troubled eyes met Mr. 
and Mrs. Moulton’s, regarding her kindly. 

“Mary was anxious about the children, not 
the car, Mrs. Garden — Lynette,” said Mrs. Moul- 
ton. 

“Mary is an anxious little hen in the Garden 
patch,” laughed her mother. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what could happen to 
two such great girls as Jane and Florimel.” 

“Of course nothing could happen to them, 
with Win another clucking hen, as bad as I am ! ” 
cried Mary, visibly glad to seize upon this reason 
for her youthful mother’s refusing to be anxious 
about the girls. 

A telegram announcing the arrival of her trio 
in New York, giving the address which would 
connect them by the magic wire with home 
and Vineclad, comforted inexperienced Mary 
by anchoring her thoughts of them to a definite 
spot, out of the space which had swallowed 
them up. 

The four girls — Dorothy, Nanette, Gladys, 
and Audrey — came to tea one day; Mr. and 


172 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Mrs. Moulton invited Mrs. Garden and Mary 
to tea with them on another of the three days of 
Mary’s loneliness. On the third Chum got a 
bone crosswise down her throat and it took so 
long to save her from imminent death, the ad- 
venture was so exciting, that the whole day 
seemed filled and curtailed by it. Consequently 
the time of the New York visit really did not 
seem long although it overlapped into the fourth 
day. A telephone message came from Win an- 
nouncing that they were staying overnight, 
some sixty miles from home, held up by a punc- 
ture and too tired to press on. 

Mary was up early the next morning, out in 
the garden to look after her pets and to make 
their dawn toilets by pulling weeds and clipping 
dead leaves, when a long graceful car, its size 
unobstrusive because of its good lines and true 
proportions, came up the side street, blew its 
horn at her several times, by way of salute, and 
stopped at the gate. 

“ Thought you’d be here!” shouted Win, as 
the engine stopped to allow him to speak. He 
sprang down from his place beside the chauffeur 
and opened the tonneau door to let out Jane 
and Florimel, who were pushing it madly but 
ineffectively. Florimel carried a basket to which 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


173 


she clung so devotedly that Mary was at once 
suspicious of it. In spite of it, she managed 
to hug Mary as hard as Jane did, and both em- 
braced her as if it were she who had just returned, 
and from a journey of desperate danger. 

“You old blessing!” cried Jane. “I’ve felt 
like a pig, a perfect pig, every minute! The 
next time I go anywhere you can’t go, let me 
know! I’ve been furious to think of it; Mel, 
too! You just said you couldn’t go, and we fell 
right in with it, and you could have gone as well 
as not! I’m a pig!” 

“You won’t get another chance to come your 
unselfishness, Mary Garden,” Florimel corrobo- 
rated her sister. “ But we had a perfectly scrump- 
tious time. Where’s Chum, and how’s mother? ” 

“Chum’s around somewhere; mother’s well. 
Chum nearly choked to death,” replied Mary, 
holding tight to Win, because she could not get a 
chance to do more than look her welcome to him 
and pat the back of his hand, which had been 
Mary’s way of petting Win since she was a baby. 

“No word for the new car, Molly?” hinted 
Win. “Some car! It brought us home in 
great shape; I’ve almost mastered running it; 
it isn’t hard. I’m going to teach you three.” 

“Indeed you’re not; not me!” cried Mary. 


174 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“But it’s a beauty. Win! It looks even better 
in the body than it does in the pictures! ” 

“Looks better in the chassis, too!” laughed 
Win. “We made no mistake in our selection. 
Captured a chauffeur, too. Come and speak to 
him. Say, Mary, he’s a wonder; English, seems 
an out-and-out gentleman; I don’t understand 
him,” Win whispered, as Mary went with him 
to the gate to greet this acquisition. 

“Willoughby, this is the eldest of the three 
young ladies, Miss Garden. Mary, this is Wil- 
loughby, Wilfrid Willoughby, who drives splen- 
didly and is going to look after us this summer,” 
Win introduced the new chauffeur. 

Willoughby bowed; then, as if he remembered, 
touched his cap with his forefinger in the groom’s 
salute. “Hope I may be allowed to look after 
you, Miss Garden,” he said, in the unmistakable 
accent of an English university man. He wore 
a close black beard and his eyebrows were inky 
black; Mary thought it gave him a queer effect. 
His eyes were the bluest blue. 

“Probably has Irish blood,” thought Mary, 
sorting out her impressions of him. 

“Take the car around — no; what am I think- 
ing of? Of course Mrs. Garden must see it. 
She’s not down yet, Mary?” asked Win. 






MARY, THIS IS WILFRID WILLOUGHBY, WHO DRIVES SPLENDIDLY AND IS 
GOING TO LOOK AFTER US THIS SUMMER’ ” 














' 















HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


175 


“No, but I’m sure she’ll not be long. I’ll 
tell her you’ve come. I’m so glad you’re back, 
you three! I wonder what I should do if I had 
to be separated from you long? Florimel, what 
is in that basket?” Mary stopped and looked 
reproachfully at Florimel, for the basket un- 
mistakably wriggled in a most unnatural way. 

“It was lost, Mary!” cried Florimel. “It 
rubbed up against us in the street. Jane said 
we mustn’t let it rub, or its bones would prick 
right through, it is so thin. But it will be 
beautiful when it’s fed and petted a little while. 
It was so grateful! Win went into a restaurant 
and bought one of those terrible thick saucers, 
like a scooped-out cobblestone, and some warm 
milk, and fed it right in a convenient to-let door- 
way, in the street. And it was so hungry it 
shook so it could hardly eat, and so grateful 
when it had taken it all up! We stood around 
it, of course, keeping off frights from it. Jane 
said if we left it, we’d be worse than the cruel 
uncles of the Babes in the Wood, for there wasn’t 
the ghost of a chance for it, not even of robins 
covering it, if it died in the street! And we all 
said one more in Vineclad, and this big place, 
would never be noticed, so we bought this basket 
and we took it back to the hotel and smuggled 


176 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


it in, and Win bribed the chambermaid to help 
us, and she did, and it has ridden up here as con- 
tented as we were! Even when Willoughby let 
the car out, to show what it could do, it never 
minded a speck! So I knew you’d be glad we 
came along and saved one starving thing! If 
everybody saved just one, there wouldn’t be one 
left to suffer! Isn’t that a hard thing to know, 
when they won’t do it?” 

“You certainly expect your hearers to sort 
out sentences, Mellie!” cried Mary. 

Willoughby, apparently without conscious- 
ness that his position forbade such comment, 
said: 

“My word, she’s a charming child! We’ve 
had a great time with Miss Florimel and her 
protegee in the basket, coming up!” 

Mary had an instant in which to wonder at 
this freedom in a well-trained English servant, as 
she said: 

“I suppose it’s a cat, Florimel? You haven’t 
said, you know.” 

“Silver-gray ground colour; broad black 
stripes!” cried Florimel. “It will be a beauty. 
Win pretended coming up he heard the wind 
rattle its bones through the basket, and that he 
thought some one was stoning the car, but you’ll 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


177 


see what a dream it will be ! Say you’re glad we 
saved it, Mary!” 

“I don’t have to say that, Mel; you know any- 
body would be, especially our sort. Take it in 
the house — or shall I? — and feed it and butter 
its paws — especially feed it. It ought to have 
a name,” said Mary. 

“It has — Lucky,” announced Florimel, rush- 
ing past Mary to take her sufferer to Anne, to 
see whom she could not wait another instant. 

Mrs. Garden was dressed and almost ready to 
go down when Mary called her. 

“I heard the horn, and knew they had come, 
and jumped right up!” she cried. “Do, pray, 
fasten my gown here at the shoulder, Mary. 
Am I properly put together? I’ll never learn 
to dress myself, and one must be gowned half- 
way right to be seen by one’s new manservant. 
Does he look all one could ask, Mary?” 

“He looks queer. I don’t mean precisely 
that; he’s really nice, speaks like an educated 
man, but his face doesn’t quite belong to him,” 
said Mary, groping for her own meaning. 

“Dear me, how extraordinary!” laughed her 
mother. “I sincerely hope he has not been dis- 
missed from his last place for stealing a face! 
I’m ready, Mary.” 


178 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Mrs. Garden, who never looked prettier nor 
more youthful than in the simple pink and 
white morning gown which she was wearing that 
morning, did not at first see the new chauffeur; 
her rapture over the car excluded all other 
objects. Win drew her attention to the man 
after she had rhapsodized over the car. 

“This is Willoughby, the new man, Lynette. 
Willoughby, this is Mrs. Garden, who is actually 
your employer.” 

Willoughby touched his cap with a hand that 
shook noticeably, though this time he made no 
mistaken salute. Mrs. Garden looked him over 
languidly, then with a mystified, increasing at- 
tention. 

“You remind me of some one,” she said. 
“Could it be that you drove for any one I 
know? Have you been in England?” 

“Yes, madam, I am English,” said Wil- 
loughby. And again Mrs. Garden looked closely 
at him, a puzzled line contracting her smooth 
brow. 

“It may be that you drove for one of my 
friends. I must have you tell me where you 
were employed there,” she said. “Mary, shall 
we try the car? Have you breakfasted, Wil- 
loughby? Then suppose you drive us — Miss 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


179 


Garden and me — about three miles? Enough 
to try the car, then you shall have a second 
breakfast. Will you come, Jane? Win?” 

“No thank you, Lynette; I must hurry down 
to the office,” said Win. 

“No, thank you, madrina; I want to see Anne 
and Abbie,” said Jane. 

So Mary, who had run back to the house for 
coats and veils, got into the car with her mother, 
the chauffeur played with various buttons, and 
they rolled away. The car was a model, one of 
the glories of its first rank. It bore them along 
rapidly, steadily, purring softly, obedient to each 
suggestion, and Mrs. Garden was in raptures. 

“Have you driven long, Willoughby? You 
drive perfectly, with caution, yet certainty,” 
Mrs. Garden said, as they slowed down after a 
little exhibition speeding on a deserted road. 

“I’ve driven since cars were made worth 
driving,” he said, forgetting his respectful 
“madam,” and turning his head with a little 
toss of it; his blood was kindled by the swift 
flight of the car through the dewy morning. To 
Mary’s utter amazement and alarm her mother 
cried out in surprise and leaning forward touched 
“Willoughby” on the shoulder. 

“I know you now!” she cried. “Lord Wil- 


180 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


frid Kelmscourt, what are you doing driving my 
car, here in Vineclad?” 

“Willoughby” stopped the engine and turned 
to face the tonneau. “I’m doing just that, 
driving your car, here in Vineclad, in New York, 
in the United States of America, and I admit 
it is most amazing,” he said. 

“Why are you wearing those ridiculous 
whiskers?” Mrs. Garden cried, and Mary sat 
dumfounded. 

“I didn’t think you’d find me out, not at 
once,” “Willoughby” said plaintively. 

“How childish you are!” Mrs. Garden said, 
half laughing, yet evidently annoyed. “Pray 
tell me how you found me, and why you came 
here in this silly fashion?” 

“Miss Lynette Devon — Mrs. Garden — didn’t 
you order me not to come where you were 
again?” asked this extraordinary masquerading 
chauffeur. “Very well; I came to America, not 
knowing you were coming here, because it was 
hard on me to stay in England and not see you. 
I saw an item in a Sunday paper in New York 
last week saying you were in Vineclad, New York; 
known in private life as Mrs. Elias Garden.” 

“Oh, Audrey’s correspondence!” interrupted 
Mrs. Garden. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


181 


“Really, I don’t know,” said “Willoughby,” 
with his strongest Oxford accent. “In another 
sheet I saw that you were advertising for a man 
to drive your car, that ‘Mrs. Elias Garden, 
in Vineclad,’ sought a man who would drive for 
her and take care of a garden. ‘My word, Wil- 
frid, my boy,’ I said to myself, ‘there’s your 
chance to get into Miss Devon’s presence and be 
near her for a few days, at least, undiscovered!’ 
I applied for the position, your brother-in-law 
selected me out of several applicants — he’s a 
discerning young chap, that brother of yours! — 
and I had the pleasure of bringing up your new 
car, your two lovely children — and of seeing you ! 
Lynette, Miss Devon — oh, bother these names! 
— Mrs. Garden, won’t you forgive me and let me 
stay?” 

“As my chauffeur? Hardly, Lord Wilfrid! 
And certainly not as my guest. Kindly drive 
us home and let me speed your departure, after 
you have breakfasted with us. If you were 
determined to disobey my distinct prohibition 
to see me again, whatever did you do it for so 
foolishly? Why didn’t you call on me, like a 
sensible man?” asked Mrs. Garden, with reason. 

“Because I’m not sensible about you! Be- 
cause I thought this would prove to what length 


182 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


I was willing to go to get into your presence! 
Because it was so unusual, so removed from the 
commonplace. Doesn’t the romance appeal 
to you, Lynette Devon Garden?” Lord Wilfrid 
pleaded. 

“It certainly does not!” cried Mrs. Garden, 
breaking into laughter, in which Mary struggled 
not to join. 

Without a word Lord Wilfrid reached forward 
and started the engine. He seemed to realize 
that from laughter there is no appeal. In un- 
broken silence, but with undiminished skill, he 
drove them home to the old Garden house. 
Mary began to feel that he was in earnest in his 
feeling for her mother and, tender-hearted ever, 
to pity him. She longed to hear the story of 
his woes. But, glancing at her mother’s pretty 
unruffled face, which looked young and con- 
tented under its shadowy veil, she felt that if 
admirers were coming to seek her out, titled 
admirers from across seas, her hands would be 
full indeed. How should she and Jane, not to 
speak of Florimel, take care of a girl-mother 
whom lords sought, when they were all too young 
to think of romance, except when it was pre- 
sented to them within book covers, its aroma 
one with printers’ ink? 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


“he nothing common did or mean” 

“Lord Wilfrid,” “Willoughby,” “the chauf- 
feur,” “the nobleman” — Mary found herself 
experimenting in her thoughts with the various 
guises in which this man should appear in them 
— drove up to the other gate of the Garden place 
and into the driving entrance. Mary guided 
him; her mother had wrapped herself in a silence 
more impenetrable than her motor veil, but 
Mary felt sure that she was enjoying herself ex- 
ceedingly. 

“The lordly chauffeur,” as Mary amused her- 
self by deciding to call him to herself, stopped 
the car, shut off the gas, and the engine sank 
into silence. He then got out, opened the 
tonneau door, and handed out the elder and 
younger ladies with a courtesy equalled only by 
his extreme gravity. 

“You are to come in, Lord Wilfrid,” said 
Mrs. Garden, passing him up the steps. 

Mary really felt sorry for him. “He hasn’t 

183 


184 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


done anything except be foolish, and I suppose 
that’s to be expected if he’s in love,” she thought 
generously. “We have not breakfasted, Lord 
Kelmscourt,” she said, with her smile that every- 
body found comforting. “I hope you are a little 
hungry, or we shall be embarrassed; it is late 
for us, in summer. We shall have great ap- 
petites.” 

Lord Wilfrid Kelmscourt proved no exception 
to the rule; he quite brightened as he received 
Mary’s sympathetic look. 

“I’m not particularly sharp set, Miss Gar- 
den,” he said. “We had a good breakfast, your 
brother — your uncle, is it? How curious! — and 
I. But I’ve no doubt I still can peck a bit.” 

“That’s a suitable thing to do when you’re 
coming into a Garden domain!” laughed Mary. 
“We have such a useful name! It makes itself 
into little mild jokes all the time.” She threw 
off her close straw hat and brushed up her damp 
hair, which its pressure had made into small 
rings of glossy brown on her forehead. 

The romantic lord, who for romance’s sake 
was ready to become such an unromantic person 
as a begoggled chauffeur, in a long, shapeless 
coat, looked admiringly at Mary. 

“Fancy your being Miss Lynette Devon’s 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


185 


daughter!” he exclaimed. “Fancy her having 
three such beautiful daughters as she has, and 
not one in the least like her charming self! I 
can’t believe you are really her child!” 

Mary looked around and saw that her mother 
had gone on up to her room. 

“Well,” thought Mary loyally, “if she won’t 
encourage him, at least there’s no use in let- 
ting him think she’s old and undesirable! She 
doesn’t seem one bit like my mother to me 
either,” she said aloud. “She was such a young 
girl when I was born that she is like another 
sister, but one that we all feel we must take more 
care of than we ever did of our other two sisters. 
She is young, of course, but she’s young in 
other ways than years.” 

“Quite right, Miss Garden!” Lord Wilfrid 
agreed heartily. He came close to Mary, speak- 
ing low and earnestly. 

“Don’t you see that I long to take care of her 
myself? Don’t you think she needs a man’s 
protection? You would not oppose me if I 
tried to win her, would you? Can’t you see 
why I took this work to be near her?” 

Mary moved away, nervously longing to laugh 
yet wishing to be kind to this strange being. 
“I can’t help feeling that we can take care of 


186 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


my mother, Mr. — Lord Kelmscourt. But, of 
course, if you were fond of her you’d want to do 
it yourself. You couldn’t expect us really to be 
willing to lose her, now we’ve had her, could 
you? I’m sure we should try not to be selfish. 
And any one can understand wanting to be near 
her — but — goggles, Lord Kelmscourt? Wouldn’t 
almost anything else be nicer? Goggles look so 
much like a huge insect ! Of course you haven’t 
them on now, but when you wore them — they 
aren’t a bit romantic!” Mary had kept her face 
sober while she answered this guest categorically, 
but murmuring something about “ seeing Anne,” 
she fairly ran away at last, to laugh her fill in 
the hall. 

Here Win came upon her and she fairly 
clutched him. 

“Oh, Win, I was afraid you’d gone to the 
office!” Mary cried. 

“Found it was earlier than I thought and that 
I needed another breakfast,” Win explained. 
“What’s up, Molly? Why are your risibles 
risen?” 

“Win, he’s not a chauffeur! He’s Lord Wil- 
frid Kelmscourt; he’s in love with our little 
mother! He saw her advertisement and took 
the place to be near her — says he thought the 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


187 


romance would strike her! She’d forbidden him 
to see her in England, you know. But he hap- 
pened to be over here, and he saw her advertise- 
ment and applied. He’s disguised a little; has a 
beard ! Mother knew him almost at once. 
Did you ever in all your life hear anything like 
it? Please take him up to your room to get 
ready for breakfast.” 

• “Say, Mary, you’re not nutty for keeps, are 
you? It’s only temporary, isn’t it? And did 
they say it was safe for you to be at large? They 
often attack their best friends, you know, sud- 
denly! Keep off, Mary, and explain what has 
done this?” Win sat down on the reception 
chair, back of the door, and held out his hands, 
palms outermost, fending off Mary. 

“Oh, Win, dear, don’t fool now!” cried Mary, 
laughing, but ready to cry. “He’s in there 
alone. Do look after him and be polite! He’s a 
guest now, and he’s to be sent right away, so 
do be polite while he lasts! I have told you; 
that’s the truth, just as I said it. Please hurry 
in, Win; you’ll sort it out when you get there. 
He’s Lord Wilfrid Kelmscourt; don’t forget 
the name.” Mary pulled Win to his feet by his 
coat lapels and pushed him toward the room 
she had just left. Win arose with a groan and 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


suffered himself to be propelled to his amazing 
duty. 

“Well, my gracious, as they say in Barrie’s 
stories: ‘It cows a’! It certainly cows a’! 
Though I never knew what that barnyard 
Scotticism meant, nor do I know what has be- 
fallen our family, through this chauffeur who 
isn’t one! He must be pretty long-sighted, 
since they had to forbid him in England from 
seeing Lynette over here! I hope to goodness 
you’ll get all right again, poor Molly!” When 
Win had disappeared through the doorway, shak- 
ing his head forebodingly for Mary’s benefit, Mary 
fled to find Anne and Jane and Florimel to 
warn them what they had to expect from him 
who had been the chauffeur, and that he was to 
breakfast with them. 

Jane and Florimel, Anne, too, in her way, 
instantly caught fire from Mary’s stirring 
tidings. 

“It’s a novel, a play going on right here in 
this house!” cried Florimel, her eyes snapping. 
“ What a lark ! As long as she doesn’t want him, 
isn’t it great?” 

“She probably will want him,” said Jane. 
“It is like a novel, and in novels they always 
relent at the end. We’ll lose her ! Lady Kelms- 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


189 


court she’ll be! We’ll be presented at court by 
her. ‘Lady Kelmscourt wore violet and point 
lace; Miss Garden wore Alice blue’ — that 
wouldn’t do, not if the dresses were together! 
White! ‘Miss Jane Garden wore canary yellow; 
Miss Florimel Garden wore rose pink. The 
young ladies’ court trains were ’” 

“Jane, for pity’s sake!” protested Mary, 
covering her ears. 

“Miss Devon had plenty of admirers before 
she married and came here; lords, aplenty!” 
Anne said proudly. But she looked troubled. 
“It’s not the same now. She was a slip of a 
girl then, hardly older than Jane, and it was all 
a play to her; didn’t interest her greatly. But 
now — if she’s forbidden this Lord Kelmscourt 
to follow her, and he’s come in spite of it, mark 
my words you may lose your lovely girl-mother, 
and I my sweet lady again!” 

“Anne, don’t croak!” Mary remonstrated. 
“We’ve got to be polite to him at breakfast, and 
we can’t be if we think he’s going to steal our 
little toy-mother! I’m sure he won’t; she meant 
just what she said.” 

Anne sniffed. “Much you could tell of what 
a woman meant!” she said. “Where’s your 
mother now?” 


190 


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“In her room,” admitted Mary unwillingly. 

“Making herself bewitching! What did I 
tell you?” cried Anne. 

Mrs. Garden floated into the dining-room in a 
perfectly irresistible gown, which none of her 
daughters had seen before. It was all foaming 
pinks and white, with irruptive lace and bows 
of three shades of pink nestling in it, and it had 
an absurd cap to enhance it, that looked, on Mrs. 
Garden’s soft light hair, as if she had brushed 
against the dawn and a bit of a pink and white 
cloud had clung to her head. 

“Does look as if Anne were right! If she 
isn’t, it’s rather mean to make it harder for him,” 
Jane whispered to Mary, while Lord Wilfrid 
was helping Mrs. Garden to her chair with a 
look that proved the wonderful morning costume 
not lost upon him. He, too, was wonderfully 
transformed by shaving and the loss of the 
disguising beard. 

Mrs. Garden was sweetly gracious, a charming 
hostess. She smiled upon Lord Wilfrid and 
asked about acquaintances they shared in Lon- 
don, how his mother, Lady Kelmscourt’s eyes 
were; she hoped they were better. Whether his 
sister, the Honourable Clara, had long felt ill 
effects from that ugly fall from her horse? And 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


191 


whether her darling little boy, Ralph, was 
growing strong and big? 

The Garden girls could not eat much for lis- 
tening to these familiar quotations from nov- 
els, as the talk sounded to them, and also 
feeling that they were taking part in private 
theatricals. But Lord Kelmscourt seemed to 
consider it all perfectly natural, as indeed it 
was, for acquaintances meeting after separation 
ordinarily inquire for common friends; it was 
an accident that these people bore titles which 
made them seem unreal to the three Vineclad 
maidens. Mary noted with satisfaction that 
Lord Wilfrid did not eat like a blighted being. 
He did full justice to the excellent breakfast, 
undaunted by its predecessor of that morn- 
ing. 

Breakfast over, Win hesitated, looking pain- 
fully embarrassed. He did not want to betray 
his knowledge of what Mary had told him, that 
his sister-in-law had ordained that this genuine 
and attractive Englishman was not to remain 
her guest. On the other hand, Win did not want 
to leave the house without bidding him good-bye. 
Mary alone noticed that Win was in a quandary, 
and was turning over in her mind ways of solv- 
ing his difficulty, when Lord Wilfrid ended it. 


192 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Are you off, Mr. Garden? You said before 
breakfast that you must hasten to the office; I 
gather that you are reading law? Now my 
disguise has proved so flimsy that your sister 
penetrated it immediately, and I must return 
to New York. I should be glad if I might linger 
in Vineclad, but the decree has gone forth I 
must also go forth! Awfully glad to have met 
you, Mr. Garden; hope to see you again. When 
you come over, look me up in London, if we 
don’t meet here. I had a delightful drive up 
here with you and the little girls — I beg their 
pardon: the young ladies! Here’s my card; that 
club will always give you an address to reach 
me.” Lord Kelmscourt shook hands with pain- 
ful heartiness, clasping Wain’s hand till it hurt 
him. 

“ Oh, I think I’ll see you again here; I hope so,” 
Win could not help saying, with unmistakable 
sincerity. He thoroughly liked this man, whose 
forty years should have been a barrier between 
them, but who was forty years young, and com- 
panionable to the youth of not much more than 
half his age. 

“Shall I see your young brother-in-law again 
in America, Mrs. Garden?” Lord Wilfrid ap- 
pealed to his hostess openly. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


193 


“It would be quite like you,” she said with a 
smile. “But if you do come to Vineclad again, 
pray come in your proper person.” 

“No objection to that, as long as you do not 
find my proper person improper,” laughed Lord 
Wilfrid, evidently relieved at not receiving a 
stern prohibition to return to Vineclad in any 
guise. 

Win got his hat, Lord Kelmscourt went out 
to the door, and here the elder and younger 
man shook hands and said good-bye all over 
again. 

“Nice boy,” Lord Wilfrid said, turning to 
Mary, who happened to be near him. “Though, 
speaking of your uncle, I suppose one should 
call him a man!” 

“He’s only a half-uncle, my father’s half- 
brother. It’s the other half that is a man; at 
home Win is only a dear big boy.” 

“I’m going immediately, Mrs. Garden,” said 
Lord Wilfrid, as Mrs. Garden joined them, antici- 
pating her possible orders. “Before I go, please 
show me your garden.” 

“Come, Mary,” said Mrs. Garden, but Mary’s 
heart failed her when she remembered that 
Lord Wilfrid had not seen her mother for a 
moment, except in the car and at the table. 


194 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“I’ve got to find Jane, madrina,” she said, 
blind to her mother’s appeal to be supported. 
And she ran away not a little perturbed. For 
perhaps Lord Kelmscourt would seize the chance 
which she had given him, and plead his cause, and 
perhaps Mrs. Garden would relent! Mary 
trembled to think that her girl-mother might 
go the way of girls, and leave her new-found 
daughters desolate. 

When, an hour later, Mrs. Garden and her 
guest returned to the house, Mary, Jane, and 
Florimel, watching anxiously behind the closed 
blinds of the upper hall, clutched one another 
jubilantly. Lord Wilfrid looked serious, far 
from glad, and their mother was as blithely un- 
ruffled as ever. 

“Poor lord!” said Jane, with a revulsion of 
feeling; she had been hating the stranger with 
all her dynamic force. “She’s held on to her 
orders, and made him go back to New York! 
Of course I’m thankful, but you can see he isn’t.” 

“Well, I think it’s perfectly great to have a 
lover, provided you send him off! I like some- 
thing like this going on in the house, as long as it 
goes the wrong way — for him,” declared Flori- 
mel. 

Mary and Jane were convulsed over this 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


195 


speech and responded to their mother’s sum- 
mons to bid Lord Kelmscourt good-bye with 
lips that would twitch, and with cheeks red- 
dened by amusement over Florimel’s original 
views of a romance. 

“ Good-bye, Miss Garden, good-bye, Miss 
Jane Garden. Good-bye, Miss Florimel Gypsy! 
We had a pleasant trip, we four, in the car, 
didn’t we? I’m sorry not to teach you to drive 
it. Miss Jane. Mr. Garden will do that. I 
hope to see you again. I’m to be allowed to 
visit Vineclad before I sail for home, ‘if I like.’ 
Do you think I shall not ‘like,’ Mary?” Lord 
Wilfrid said, not noticing that he had dropped 
his more formal address to Mary, won by the 
kindly blue eyes in the sweet young face smiling 
at him. 

“I’m sure that you will come and that we 
shall all be glad to see you,” said Mary. 

“You dear girl!” said Lord Kelmscourt, with 
a farewell grip of Mary’s soft hand that under- 
scored his words. 

Mr. and Mrs. Moulton came over to Holly- 
hock house that night, as they usually did, to sit 
in the garden, now rioting with midsummer 
bloom, for the beneficent hours of the first dark- 
ness after a warm day. They heard the story 


196 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


of the disguised chauffeur with the amusement 
that the girls knew that he would feel, on Mr. 
Moulton’s part, and the impatience which they 
were equally sure his wife would feel. 

“Such nonsense!” she cried. “I’m gtad you 
sent him right about, Lynette!” 

“Oh, but he will come back!” protested Mrs. 
Garden mischievously, swung to the other side 
by this injudicious remark. 

“I think he was a trump!” said Mark, who 
always came when the Moultons did, and just 
as surely when they did not. “He’s got the 
right idea; better be original, if it isn’t too sen- 
sible. You’ve got to remember him now, and 
talk about him, and maybe that was what he 
was after.” 

“Well, Mark!” exclaimed Mrs. Moulton. 
“Where did you learn your wisdom?” 

“Tell you some day!” laughed Mark, flush- 
ing. 

That night the three Garden girls got to- 
gether in Mary’s bedroom and sat down in their 
white nightgowns to a serious talk. 

“It isn’t so much that I think madrina will 
marry this lordly chauffeur, but the thing is she 
isn’t safe! Some one else will see her and fall 
in love with her, just as the girls have, just as 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


197 


we have! For she was a total stranger to us, 
just as much! I’ll never feel easy again — 
though Chum is getting to be a watch dog!” 
So spoke Jane, rocking herself comfortably on 
the floor, with a foot in each hand, wrapped 
around in her gown, and her glorious hair shining 
around her. 

Florimel stretched herself across the foot of 
Mary’s bed, holding up her arms to let the 
breeze blow up her flowing sleeves. “It would 
be bad enough if you or Mary were grown up 
and — if you were grown up, and anybody noticed 
it, and — and liked you, Jane,” she said delicately. 
“But, well, I do hope madrina won’t be too 
pretty — for us to keep, I mean.” 

“I think Lord Kelmscourt is nice, really very 
nice,” said Mary. “I think, here in Vineclad, 
where everybody is either old, married, or un- 
interesting, and half the time all three, madrina 
will be safe enough, if she doesn’t care for the 
lordly chauffeur. I must say he is really nice; 
Win thinks so, too. And being English, ma- 
drina may enjoy being Lady Kelmscourt more 
than we can think. I’m frightened, that’s the 
truth, but I won’t worry. If it happens I’m 
going to like it, however I don’t!” Mary checked 
herself with a laugh at her own heroism. 


198 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“What a thing it is to have a pretty little toy- 
mother! It’s a great responsibility!” said Jane, 
jesting, yet in earnest. “Three maiden ladies 
and their caged linnet!” 

Florimel bounced over to the head of the bed 
with a movement so swift that she seemed to 
lie at both ends of the bed at once. “How do 
you suppose she got on in England, while we 
were little?” she asked, and after this sensible 
and pertinent suggestion there was nothing to 
do but to go to bed. The meeting was over for 
that night. 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


“and learn the luxury of doing good” 

Jane came upon Florimel, busy with Chum on 
the lawn. 

“I don’t think either of them likes it, but it’s 
good for them, teaches them patience and makes 
them accomplished,” Florimel volunteered for 
Jane’s benefit as she came up. 

“Them? Who besides Chum?” asked Jane, 
looking around. 

“ Oh, my ! He must have run into the currant 
hedge!” cried Florimel. “I meant Lucky. I 
was teaching him to ride on Chum’s back. He 
sticks on pretty well, but he hates it. Sticks 
too well; his claws rather annoy Chum.” 

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t!” Jane sym- 
pathized with Chum. “I see Lucky’s nose pok- 
ing out under there, to see if it’s safe to come 
out. Do let him alone, Mel! You bothered 
Chum’s life out, and now the cat has no peace. 
Such a pretty cat as he’s turned out!” 

199 


200 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Didn’t we know he would?” triumphed 
Florimel. “Those black stripes on his silver 
colour are so stylish! If I do torment them, 
Chum and Lucky like me better than any one; 
don’t you, Chum pup?” Florimel hugged Chum 
breathless and the dog plainly was ecstatic over 
her condescension. “I’m teaching Lucky to 
come when I whistle, like a dog, only not the 
same call I use for Chum. Watch!” Florimel 
whistled two notes, repeated like a bird call, and 
Lucky, whose added flesh and beauty proved 
his name suitable, came pleasantly to her, not 
with any of Chum’s joy at being noticed, but 
with a slow, condescending courtesy. “He’s 
the Prince and the Pauper, all in one, like Doctor 
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” cried Florimel, snatch- 
ing Lucky to her breast and eagerly scratching 
his chin to win a purr. “He was the pauper, and 
now he’s the prince, and you’d think he had 
been the President and his cabinet, and lived 
on the best the White House could give him all 
his life! He likes me lots, but he knows I’m 
just as lucky as he is to be allowed to save him. 
I don’t care! I like to be snubbed — by a cat! 
See this act.” 

Florimel set Lucky on Chum’s back, ordered 
Chum to “Get up!” and for a glorious six or 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


201 


seven feet of distance Chum served Lucky as his 
steed, to the disgust of both. Then the cat 
growled and sprang off, this time galloping to 
the house with tail a-hoop, resolved not to be 
cajoled by a whistle again to do what he despised, 
and Chum wagged her whole body apologetically, 
reminding Florimel that, though she objected 
to circus performances, it was the cat who had 
broken bounds. 

“Mel, little madrina longs for a chauffeur,” 
said Jane. “She says no matter how well you 
and I could drive, she’d never ride with either 
of us, and Win can’t give up the law altogether. 
Where shall we get a man?” 

“I think we’re both learning beautifully, 
Janie!” said Florimel, in an injured tone. “I 
haven’t done a thing wrong since the day I went 
into the garage without putting down the brake 
— and the brake was spelled another way, by 
the wind-shield and the wall! You’ve got to do 
something like that to start with; they all do! 
You haven’t done anything yet, but you may; 
you drive better than I do, though. You don’t 
seem a bit red-haired when you drive, Jane, 
honest! You’re just as quiet and clear-headed, 
you’re not afraid, and you’re not reckless— 
not smarty-cat! I think you drive plenty well 


202 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


enough for madrina to trust you, if you take a 
little longer training.” 

“Much obliged, Mel, for your compliments,” 
said Jane. “It’s nice of you to say all that, 
when you want to drive so badly. I think, 
myself, I’d be safe driving here in Vineclad, but 
if madrina’s nervous, she’s nervous, and that’s 
all there is to be said about it. It seems to me 
madrina’s painfully quiet lately; I’m afraid 
she’s getting tired of it — tireder l It must take 
a while to realize one’s voice is gone, and the fur- 
ther you get into realizing it, the worse it is, of 
course. We thought — Mary and I — that we 
ought to find a man to-day, but ‘that’s all the 
further we got,’ as Abbie says.” 

“Let’s get out the car and drive all around for 
ten miles, on every side, blowing the horn, with 
a sign standing up on the back seat: ‘Man wanted 
to run this!’” suggested Florimel. 

Mary came running out of the house. “Janie, 
Florimel! Abbie thinks, maybe, she knows a 
man!” she cried. 

“I doubt it!” Jane promptly commented. 
“Abbie doesn’t look as though she would know 
one, ever; she looks as though she’d slaughter 
one if he were introduced to her.” 

“She doesn’t know this one, personally,” 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


£03 


Mary admitted. “But she has just thought of 
somebody named Joel Bell who might answer. 
She is sure he doesn’t know how to drive, but 
she says he’s fine at general work, especially 
gardening, and madrina wants that, too. Abbie 
thinks this Joel is bright, and could learn to run 
the car. There’s one thing certain: he could 
wash it!” 

“What happens?” asked Jane, knowing Mary 
and that she had a plan. “Do we go out in the 
car hunting him? Do you suppose he’s a boo- 
jum snark? If he is, there’s no use hunting him.” 

“We are going this evening; madrina would 
like to go with us. Win will take us, some of 
us — all of us, if we want to go, of course. I 
thought it would be nice to take Abbie, as long 
as it’s her exploration. She doesn’t have much 
fun,” said Mary. 

“Fine to take Abbie, Molly darling! But if 
she goes it’s a good thing it’s a seven passenger 
car. Her sixth is equal to two fractions,” Jane 
remarked. 

“I would never imagine that madrina would 
take a man to train as a chauffeur ! I’m already 
considerably trained, and she’s afraid with me. 
She ought to have a good driver, else why not 
trust to Jane?” 


204 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


s “Jane can’t repair punctures, change tires, 
nor pump them up. Madrina feels safer with a 
man; I do, too, Janie; if you don’t mind? There’s 
something in seeing a man’s hands on the wheel 
that gives you a sense of security. Perhaps 
it’s only because men have held steering wheels 
so long ! Yet muscle does count.” Mary looked 
her apology to Jane. 

“If any woman could be a more reckless and 
generally good for nothing driver than some 
men!” exclaimed Jane disgustedly. 

“Janie,” said Mary, lowering her voice and 
glancing toward the house, “madrina is so 
blue! I came upon her crying her heart out a 
little while ago. She would not tell me what 
was wrong, but I heard her trying to sing before 
that, and her voice is quite, quite gone! It’s 
the first time she has done more than hum. She 
couldn’t sing at all!” 

“No need of asking why she cried, then!” 
said Jane, with a quiver in her own voice. “I 
thought she was sad lately and I wondered if 
Lord Kelmscourt had anything to do with it. 
Of course she didn’t have to send him away, but 
his coming must have brought back her old life 
to her.” 

“Well,” said Florimel, with an expression 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


205 


that might have suited a maiden in the Roman 
colosseum, with the lion pit just opened before 
her, “if madrina wants the lordly chauffeur, not 
to drive for her but to travel with her all the rest 
of her life I, for one, am not going to make a 
fuss. I thought I couldn’t stand it to have her 
marry him and go away again, even if we did 
visit her; we’d not go to England for good and 
leave our garden. But I will stand it; I’ll write 
him, myself, to come back, if she’s sorry she made 
him go.” 

“He’s coming to Vineclad before he sails. 
Madrina isn’t so silly ! She wants to sing. 
Can’t you see, Florimel, how fearful it is to be 
what she was; and then to be nothing — oh, I 
don’t mean that! The dear, little, charming 
madrina! But nothing the world knows about; 
just the Garden girls’ mother!” cried Jane. 

“We all see, Janie,” said Mary sadly. “I’ve 
been thinking. Isn’t there something, some 
charity, for which we could raise money?” 

Jane and Florimel stared at her. “Vineclad 
is pretty comfortable, you know; not much 
chance here to work for charity,” said Jane 
slowly. “Why, in all this wide world, did you 
say that, Mary? You’ve something in your 
brain; I know you!” 


206 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“You can’t know me very well, if you don’t 
think my brain is empty, Janie,” laughed Mary. 
“I was thinking that if we could get up an en- 
tertainment, for an object — you can’t seem to 
have entertainments just to entertain! — madrina 
might be interested. She could give some of 
her impersonations, in those costumes the girls 
were so crazy about, and she could train the girls 
— be deep in it, in all sorts of ways. I believe it 
would be good for her.” 

Jane and Florimel were in raptures. “For all 
of us!” they cried together. 

“Oh, Molly darling, what a good head you’d 
make for a sanitarium! You’d know just what 
to do for every single thing that ailed people!” 
added Florimel. 

“It can’t be hard to know what any one 
needs when your thoughts are almost inside 
her mind; you love her so much, and long so 
to make her happy,” said Mary. 

“Glad you like my notion! The thing now is 
to find a Worthy Object.” 

“A Worthy Object that won’t object un- 
worthily?” suggested Jane. “We’ll find one, 
my Mary ! If we have to burn down some one’s 
house and set the family down beside the road, 
with only one stocking apiece — and amputate 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 207 

the other legs ! — we’ll find some one to whom we 
can give our proceeds!” 

“If I drive the car maybe I could run over the 
head of a family,” said Florimel hopefully. “I 
can’t steer very well yet.” 

“You’d be more likely to wreck your car to 
save a chicken!” laughed Mary. “The head 
of the family would have to be taken off and 
rolled right under the car for you to hurt it, 
soft-hearted little Mel!” 

“My heart might be all right, and my hand 
all wrong,” retorted Florimel. 

“We’ll ask Mr. and Mrs. Moulton and Win 
to find us something to give money to.” 

That evening Win brought around the great 
car and Mrs. Garden and Mary persuaded Flori- 
mel to join them in the tonneau, to let Win carry 
on Jane’s education in driving a little farther. 
Jane sat with Win in the front, and the middle 
seats were occupied by Anne and Abbie, Anne’s 
tall and bony structure counterbalancing Abbie’s 
unwieldiness. 

“Win, we are to drive ‘entirely northward,’ 
Abbie said,” Jane explained, her voice covered 
by the engine from the hearing of the others. 
“We go to the edge of Vineclad, ‘most to the 
next town’; Joel Bell lives in the country.” 


208 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“All right, Janie; catch hold of the wheel 
and change places with me. You’re to drive 
and find this Bell. What a lot of bother it would 
save if he were the kind of bell that kept ringing, 
as long as Abbie doesn’t know precisely where 
he lives,” said Win, holding the wheel steady 
over Jane’s head as he stood up to slip into the 
other seat. 

The pleasures of the chase were added to the 
enjoyment of the lovely drive in that exquisite 
hour between sunset and summer starlight. 

Joel Bell proved illusive — Mary said perhaps 
he was a diving bell. At last they found some 
one who could tell them where to go, and they 
made the last stage of the journey carefully, for 
it was a neighbourhood perfectly capable of 
throwing tire-wrecking substances into the road. 
Joel Bell proved to be a melancholy person. His 
melancholy was justified when it developed that 
his wife had died some months ago, leaving him 
with three small Bells to be taken care of and 
provided for. The trouble was that poor Joel 
could not provide for them, if he took care of 
them, for earning money and staying at home 
were not compatible. 

“I know a real smart girl, young, but old 
enough to take care of children like mine — the 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


209 


baby’s most two — if I could afford to hire her, 
but I can’t, so what ’m I to do?” he demanded. 
“There ought to be some place in Vineclad 
where you could dump little children while you 
worked, same’s I hear tell of elsewhere.” 

“A Baby Dump, sometimes called a Day 
Nursery! There’s our Object!” cried Jane, 
stretching her slender neck backward to make 
Mary hear. 

“Are there enough people here who would use 
such a place, Mr. Bell?” asked Mary, leaning 
over the door of the car with her sympathetic 
eyes on Joel Bell’s melancholy face. 

“ ’Round here they is,” he said, looking at 
Mary with the frankest admiration. “There’s 
a mill right near here; lots of folks work in it, 
men and women; they’d get on better if they had 
some such dumpin’ place to leave their babies. 
An’ a kind of a dispensation would be good, run 
along with it.” 

“A dispensation? From school? The chil- 
dren wouldn’t be old enough for that,” said Win, 
feeling his way toward enlightenment. 

“Land, no! I don’t see what you mean,” 
said Joel Bell, mystified in his turn. “A dis- 
pensation where they’d get medicine free, an’ 
maybe a doctor’s overhaulin’.” 


210 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Oh, of course! Why didn’t we think of 
that?” cried Mary hastily, afraid Win would 
heedlessly correct Joel and tell him that he had 
meant to say dispensary. 

“Well, well!” Mrs. Garden cried impatiently, 
having no clue to why this need of the neigh- 
bourhood should interest her three girls as it did. 
“All this is quite wide of the mark! We came 
to offer you a position in my employ, my good 
man. I am told that you know enough of gar- 
dening to be useful to us, and, if possible, I 
want you to learn to drive this car. Get the 
young girl you spoke of to look after your chil- 
dren, and you will find yourself much better off 
than you have been, I’ll warrant.” 

“Dear me, if madrina only wouldn’t call 
Abbie ‘my good woman!’ and this man ‘my 
good man!’ I’m sure they hate it,” thought 
Mary, aghast at this imperative manner of deal- 
ing with the difficult native American tempera- 
ment. 

“Do I understand that you’re a-askin’ me 
to work for you, ma’am?” asked Joel Bell. 

“You see, Mr. Bell,” Win interposed, “it’s 
this way: Mrs. Garden is nervous about driving 
with her daughters alone; I am busy all day, 
and she wants a trusty man to learn the car and 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


211 


to look after our big old garden. Maybe you 
know it? Hollyhock House, on the opposite 
side of town, rather outside it? On Picea 
Street?” 

Joel Bell’s face glowed with unexpected en- 
thusiasm. “I should say I did know the old 
Garden place!” he cried. “Are you Win- 
chester Garden, that they call Win? Never 
once suspected who ’twas! I know a con- 
siderable of gardenin’, but cars ain’t in my line. 
Maybe they’d come to me, though. Would 
you make it wuth my while „ to accept your 
offer, ma’am? I’d have to hire a girl for my off- 
spring.” 

“If you can learn to drive and take care of the 
garden, both, I’ll give you — fourteen pounds, 
was it, Win? Seventy-five dollars a month, did 
you say, Win? If you can’t drive, perhaps we’d 
keep you anyway, at about forty dollars or so,” 
said Mrs. Garden carelessly. 

Joel’s eyes shot a gleam of triumphant joy, 
which his pride instantly recalled. “I’ll think 
it over, ma’am,” he said nonchalantly, “an’ let 
you know in a day or two. To who do I feel 
indebted for recommendin’?” 

“Don’t know to whom you do feel indebted, 
Joel,” laughed Win, thinking it about time Mr. 


212 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Bell came off his pedestal. “But it is Abbie 
Abbott, here, who told us of you.” 

“Indeed!” said Joel, bowing as if he were 
acknowledging an introduction. “An’ t’ best 
o’ my knowledge an’ belief I never met the lady 
before now.” 

“You didn’t! But my cousin Lemuel Ab- 
bott, the plumber, told me ’bout you,” snapped 
Abbie, unbearably annoyed by her own embar- 
rassment at this extreme gallantry. 

“Better close the deal now, Joel; we shall not 
care about coming again to see you,” advised 
Win, seeing that Joel needed less than no time 
for consideration of the offer. 

“Well, I might try it, s’long’s you need a 
man,” Joel said graciously. “I’ll be taken on as 
a gardener, till you learn me to shofer real good. 
I’m poor, but I’m straight; I wouldn’t take 
wages I hadn’t earnt.” 

“Right-o!” Win approved him, as Mrs. 
Garden, entirely at sea as to how to deal with 
this unknown type of servant, murmured some- 
thing about this being satisfactory. 

“Move on, Janie!” said Win, watching Jane 
manipulate the starting button and the gas. 
“Turn on your lights before we start; you’ll 
need them to drive.” 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


213 


Joel watched her also, with admiration that 
included reassurance. “Seems as if I could do 
what a little red-headed girl could,” he said, 
in all sincerity, without intending to be imperti- 
nent. 

When the car had brought them all home 
again, under Jane’s handling, “without one 
bit of help from Win this time!” she trium- 
phantly reminded her family, the girls huddled 
together in the hall and in animated whispers 
discussed the suggestion they had received. 

“It seems perfectly ridiculous to establish a 
Day Nursery in Vineclad,” said Mary, anxious 
to do so, but equally anxious not to make their 
charity absurd. 

“But Joel knows!” Florimel said aloud, im- 
mediately clapping her hand over her lips. 
“He knows a great deal besides, but he must 
know that neighbourhood.” 

“Win told me coming home that Hammersley 
& Dallas had once had some law case to settle 
near there, real estate quarrel, and that there 
were hardly any Americans over there. There 
are poor Italians, and some Hungarians working 
in that mill. Fancy, in Vineclad! We don’t 
know our own town across its width!” said 
Jane. “We’ll get up an entertainment for a 


214 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Day Nursery and a — ‘a Dispensation 5 for the 
little youngsters over there. It’s all right, 
Mary; it must be needed if that man says 
so. But I’ve often noticed that almost any 
object is all right, enough excuse, I mean, if 
people want to have an entertainment.” 

“I’m sure we don’t want it ourselves!” sighed 
Mary. 

“No, indeed! No fussing for me! I’d rather 
stay outdoors; summer’s short enough!” Jane 
confirmed her. 

“ Well, I don’t know ! ” said Florimel. “ We’ve 
been outdoors all our lives, in the garden, sum- 
mers. I’d like to do some perfectly gloriumphant 
stunt, if madrina could train me to, something 
that went with a zip!” 

“That’s the way it would go if you did it, 
even if it was sitting fishing in a pond where 
there wasn’t one fish to bite!” declared Mary, 
rumpling Florimel’s black hair and laughing as 
she shook her lightly and kissed her hard. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
“wise to resolve and patient to perform” 

“Now, small madrina,” said Jane, coming 
into the library where her mother sat before the 
hearth upon which Mark was laying a fire in 
deference to the cool dampness of the evening; 
“you are to be told something, and implored 
something, and you must be very, very good 
and ready to say yes to a polite beggar.” 

“I’d be surer to say yes to a rude beggar, be- 
cause I’d be afraid of him,” Mrs. Garden said. 
“Please don’t ask me to go on a picnic, Jane; I 
loathe picnics.” 

“ Not a picnic in my possession ! ” declared Jane. 
“But that’s mind reading! How did you guess 
I had any sort of festivity in my mind?” 

“Jane, if I dared permit myself an ancient 
bit of slang, I’d say I’d no idea you had festivi- 
ties in your mind, that I thought Vineclad fes- 
tivities were all in your eye! I’ve been here 
over two months and the gayest times I’ve 
seen were our own garden party — and that was 

215 


216 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


nice — and some depressing teas. I do wish I 
dared hope your festivity were festive!” 

“Madrina, we’re going to get up ” 

“Well, it’s encouraging to hear you’re the 
originator of the affair, Jane,” Jane’s mother 
interrupted her energetically. “You are my 
daughters; more likely to think of something 
I’d enjoy. Tell me!” 

“We are going to get up something, we don’t 
know what; we’re counting on you to tell us, to 
raise a little money for the Day Nursery that 
Joel Bell said was needed over there. Don’t 
you think we ought to? ” Jane tried to look .noble. 
Her mother laughed and Mark applauded with 
the tongs. 

“In all truth, my dear, I don’t think you could 
raise enough for the nursery, but no one could 
approve more heartily than I of the attempt,” 
Mrs. Garden said. “Haven’t you, really, thought 
of an entertainment? Because I have! I’ve 
been thinking of it a good deal lately. Shall I 
tell you? It’s original. Anything at this time 
of year ought to be held out of doors, don’t you 
think? W T ould it matter that we used our gar- 
den? I mean do we seem to emphasize the 
garden too much? It is so lovely, so big and 
suitable to almost any purpose.” 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


217 


“You couldn’t have said anything we’d like 
to hear much better than that, madrina,” said 
Mary, slipping into the room behind her mother’s 
chair and laying her hands on the shoulders 
which persisted in remaining thinner than the 
Garden girls liked to see them. “We hoped 
you’d love our best friend and dearest possession.” 

“Of course I love such a garden as that!” 
cried Mrs. Garden. “Here’s my idea of a nice, 
perfectly new kind of party: Invite your guests 
— since it’s to be for charity, sell tickets in- 
stead — to meet their friends, of all ages and con- 
ditions. Select certain people to be the actors 
and distribute among them just as many char- 
acters as you can; as you can costume and get 
well taken, that means. Each character would 
wear a number in a conspicuous place, and wan- 
der about the gardens, which would be hung 
with lanterns and made as pretty as possible in 
every way. Some of the actors would represent 
several characters ; they would wander about for 
a certain length of time in one costume, then 
change and reappear in another. Some of your 
helpers would have more talent than the others 
and could enact more roles. The — I wonder 
if one should say audience in such a case? 
The guests not acting would be provided with 


218 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


small pads and pencils, the pads headed with 
the words: ‘I Met’ — followed by numbers 
down the side of each page, as many numbers 
as there were characters represented. The 
guests would write against each number the 
name of the character — his guess of the char- 
acter — bearing that number. Prizes would be 
jpven for the three most accurate lists in order 
of merit — first, second, and third prizes, and a 
consolation prize, if you wished. The actors 
would be required to enact their parts as well 
as they could, and to answer questions — trying, 
of course, to give baffling answers — put by the 
guessers to elicit their identity. We should 
alter and add to this programme as we came to 
experiment with it, I suppose. Don’t you think 
it might be made perfectly charming? All 
these prettily costumed creatures wandering 
around under the lantern-hung trees, singing, re- 
citing, doing whatever the characters demanded 
done? And mightn’t it be lots of fun?” 

The girls, Florimel, too, and Win, now added 
to the group before the fire, had listened to Mrs. 
Garden’s description of her idea for a summer 
evening’s revel without interrupting her, but 
with glances at one another expressing their 
satisfaction. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


£19 


“Madrina, it’s great!” cried Jane, first, as 
usual, to find her voice. 

“It would be beautiful, really beautiful, if 
we could do it as it ought to be done,” said 
Mary, doubt and desire in her voice. 

“Well, I want to be Lady Macbeth!” cried 
Florimel, which desire, accompanied in its ex- 
pression by a jump from her low stool and a 
pirouette most unsuited to tragedy, raised a 
shout of laughter. 

“We’d call the entertainment ‘the Garden 
of Dreams,’” Jane announced. 

“Janie, what a happy label!” Mary said. 
“My one fear, madrina mia, is that we couldn’t 
carry out your lovely programme, but if you 
train us, I suppose we might.” 

“ Of course I’ll train you ! And take any num- 
ber of characters myself. Shall we make out 
a list of characters? Get pencils and paper, 
Florimel, please, and we could set down the 
names of the actors — your part of it, girls!” 
Mrs. Garden was all animation, youthfulness 
flowed into her and flashed from her. Her chil- 
dren exchanged satisfied glances; already their 
plot was a success. The advertised object of 
the entertainment was not their object; the 
Day Nursery was incidental. What mattered 


220 HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 

was that their plaything mother, growing dearer 
to them and more of an anxiety each day, 
should be kept interested and happy. 

“Now that our future voters have spoken,” 
said Win, “might a mere man say that he thinks 
this a suggestion worthy of a better cause? 
Also that a Day Nursery in the neighbourhood 
proposed for it would be a da-go nursery? Also 
to ask where you’d get costumes, and what you 
think your proceeds would amount to, if you 
hired so many costumes, decent enough to be 
seen at close range?” 

“Oh, Win !” Mary’s distressed voice surprised 
Win, who lacked the clue to her eagerness 
not to have her mother’s suggestion wet-blank- 
eted, “we can make most of the girls’ costumes, 
and it wouldn’t cost much to hire a few for the 
men.” 

“Why, Winchester, I have a whole chestful 
of costumes among my boxes,” Mrs. Garden 
triumphed in her announcement. 

“What may I be?” Mark asked meekly, 
having been listening and not talking. 

“Mark Twain!” Mary almost shouted this 
happy discovery. “Mark Two, you know! 
You have thick hair; we’ll comb it out bushy, 
and powder it, and you can wear a white suit! 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 221 

That would be fine, for one thing! Too easy 
to guess, but some must be easy.” 

“I thought little Jack Horner would fit me; 
I’ve pulled out a plum in Mr. Moulton — also a 
peach, in Mrs. Moulton, too,” Mark said sin- 
cerely. 

“Perhaps Jacky was really a good boy, and 
was right when he said it, and that’s why he 
get the plum,” said Jane slyly. 

Mark smiled at her. “I thought I ought to 
be Richard Third,” he said. “He was lame, 
wasn’t he? I could don a hump. He’s not an 
attractive gentleman.” 

“Was he lame? He limped on the straight 
and narrow path, Mark,” commented Win. 
“But lame is too big a word for your tiny drop 
step, Mark!” protested Florimel. 

“Drop step? That’s a new one, Florimel! 
Quick step, sick step, drop step — goes like a 
door step!” laughed Mark, who sensibly refused 
to be sensitive about his slight lameness. 

“Is the meeting adjourned, with a resolution 
to hold the Garden of Dreams festival? Be- 
cause Abbie was making us grape juice sherbet 
when I came in. She said she thought we’d be 
about uncomfortable enough from our fire to 
want it later on ! And we are pretty warm and 


222 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


miserable for people who were chilly, aren’t we?” 
Mary arose as she spoke and went toward the 
door to let Abbie know that the hour for sherbet 
had struck. She laid her hand, with a caressing 
touch that suggested a benediction, on her 
mother’s head as she passed her. 

“Happy, little Lynette-madrina?” she asked, 
without pausing for an answer. 

Mark stirred in his chair and turned his eyes 
upon the fire to hide from the others the look 
that he was himself conscious had sprung into 
them as he had watched Mary’s betrayal of her 
sweetness; to hide also the moisture that often 
rose to them when this happy Garden family 
reminded him that, though his days were now 
filled with friendly affection, he had no one 
whom he might claim his own. 

The Vineclad girls, when they heard of the 
Garden of Dreams, were ready to give the 
Gardens, mother and daughters, the adula- 
tion which grateful children pay — or should 
pay — to fairy godmothers, who turn the pump- 
kins of this work-a-day world into chariots, 
and make the most secret longings of youth- 
ful hearts come true. Never before had it 
befallen them to impersonate the heroines of 
romance, clad in picturesque garments, trailed 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 223 

blissfully through fairy scenes. It was not 
a simple task to apportion the characters. 
Not only must they be given to the persons best 
fitted physically to assume them, but a per- 
fectly successful impersonation involved mental 
sympathy between the real and assumed indi- 
viduals, else bearing and movements would be 
out of accord. When it came to fencing to ward 
off the guessers’ questions, which must be 
answered, betrayals would be inevitable, unless 
each actor understood the character he, or she, 
portrayed sufficiently to reply correctly yet 
misleadingly. The Vineclad boys were dubious 
about the whole thing; they had a common mis- 
giving among them that walking about in cos- 
tume would “make them feel like fools.” There 
were a few who took kindly to the idea, seeing 
it in its true light, as informal drama, but in the 
main the older men were impressed into service 
for the masculine characters, which remained in 
the minority. Mr. Moulton developed amaz- 
ing enthusiasm for the dressing-up game, un- 
expected, and the more delightful in him. He 
volunteered to assume the roles of blind Mil- 
ton, if Mary would walk with him as Milton’s 
devoted daughter, Mary; Sir Humphrey Gil- 
bert, for whom Mr. Moulton, it seemed, had a 


224 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


secret admiration; Merlin, out of Tennyson’s 
Idyls, and King Cophetua, with Florimel as the 
Beggar Maid. 

“It’s perfectly scrumptious of you. Guar- 
dian!” said Jane. “We never dreamed we 
could get you into it — and four times! It must 
be all those plants you work over springing up 
in you and making you blossom out!” 

“A botanist ought to enjoy transformations, 
an elderly man ought to be glad to be rejuvenated, 
and we are all secretly inclined to the drama, 
my dear,” Mr. Moulton answered her. “This 
notion of Lynette’s strikes my fancy; I leaped 
to the bait of one night’s youthfulness; that’s 
all.” 

“Nothing to apologize for, Mr. Moulton,” 
said Mary. “You are to have four roles, then, 
and Mark four — Galahad, Alexander Hamilton 
— we think Mark looks a little like him — Clive 
Newcome, Kim. And Win will be Mark Antony 
— I don’t see how anybody can be sure which Ro- 
man he is, when togas were so fashionable! — 
Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, L’Aig- 
lon — in a gorgeous satin costume! — and Oliver 
Goldsmith. If only you three could be in as 
many places at once as you can take parts we’d 
seem to have an army of men ! That short Dal- 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


225 


las boy, Fred, is to be Little Tommy Tucker, 
crying for his supper, and Phil Ives will be Bar- 
naby Rudge, with a stuffed crow they have, a 
pet crow he was before he was stuffed — as 
Barnaby’s raven, on his shoulder. It will really 
be good. We have George Washington, tall 
Mr. Bristead, and Agamemnon, king of men, 
will be Mr. Hall, because he’s so huge. Good- 
ness only knows what he’ll look like if he wears 
a Grecian costume! And Mr. Low wants to be 
Falstaff — with pillows to fill him out — and he 
will act the part well. There are other men 
characters. Tiny Nanette Hall is to be Little 
Miss Netticoat, in a white petticoat! That will 
really be dear ! A straight little candle costume, 
a red flame wired up on her head, and a fluffy 
white skirt, like a candle shade! The girls are 
ready to take as many parts as we can dress.” 

“I’m to be Briinhilde,” cried Jane, “on ac- 
count of my hair. And Joan of Arc, and the 
White Lady of Avenel, and the Red-haired 
Girl in ‘The Light that Failed,’ and Lady Clara 
Vere de Vere, and Snow White — as many more 
as they like! Madrina is going to teach me the 
‘ Willow Song,’ and I’m to be Ophelia, but that’s 
a secret! I’m crazy about it.” 

“Most suitable to Ophelia; it promises well 


226 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


for your acting the part, Jane,” suggested Mr. 
Moulton. “And Mary?” 

“I’m to be your Beggar Maid, Cophetua’s,” 
cried Florimel, not hearing his question. “And 
Katharine Seyton, in ‘The Abbot,’ and Madge 
Wildfire, and Cleopatra, and Lady Babbie, in 
‘The Little Minister,’ and Topsy — black face! 
Burnt cork! Goodness, what fun! And a 
Spanish dancer; Carmen, we’ll call her.” 

“I’m Mary Milton, with you,” Mary then 
got a chance to say. “And Ruth Pinch, and 
Dinah Craik, in ‘Adam Bede,’ you know, and 
Florence Nightingale, and Madam Butterfly, 
and Pippa — the Pippa who passed. I like that 
one, an Italian peasant dress, and just go hap- 
pily along singing softly: ‘God’s in his heaven 
and all’s right in the world.’ And madrina 
wants me to be Mother Hubbard, in a nice, little 
tucked-up gown, with Chum following me around 
after a bone. But I’m afraid the crowd would 
be more frightful to Chum than the bone would 
be attractive. You never could imagine the 
lovely things madrina will be and do! She’s 
going to wear about seven of her costumes. 
We’ve got to find names for each part. People 
can’t guess, it wouldn’t be fair if she were just 
‘A Child’; it must be some particular child, and 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


227 


so on. But we can arrange that. Madrina is so 
happy over it, Mr. Moulton! She isn’t a bit 
lonely now.” 

“Own up, my Mary! You are not doing this 
for a charity in the first place, but for your 
mother’s sake — or perhaps you think charity 
should begin at home?” Mr. Moulton accused 
Mary, a hand on her shoulder. 

“Madrina must not dwell on her lost voice, 
dear Guardian,” said Mary, with a deprecating 
look. “Do you think Mrs. Moulton could be 
persuaded to represent Cinderella’s godmother? 
We could have a dear Cinderella group if she 
would.” 

“ I think nothing short of chloroforming her and 
setting her up, unconscious, to fill a lay figure’s 
role could get my wife into anything distantly 
resembling tableaux, or amateur theatricals!” 
laughed Mr. Moulton. 

“I suppose I knew that,” sighed Mary, then 
smiled, dismissing her regret. “We’re terribly 
rushed rehearsing; madrina is training some one 
every minute. I’ve got to go now, Mr. Moul- 
ton. I need practice as Pippa.” 

It was perfectly true that the Garden girls 
were “terribly rushed rehearsing.” The Gar- 
den of Dreams took on nightmare aspects at 


228 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


times, it required so much anxious discussing, so 
much actual hard work, added to which the 
heat of August, sultry and heavy, made ham- 
mocks alluring and naps hard to ward off. 
But on the whole even the unexpectedly ardu- 
ous preparations were enjoyable, Mrs. Garden 
was in her element, and the outlook was all for 
success. One important happy result had al- 
ready been attained from the mere rehearsing 
of the Garden of Dreams. Jane had developed 
under her mother’s training such instinctive 
talent for the dramatic singing required to ac- 
company impersonations that Mary and Win 
were amazed, and Mrs. Garden was greatly 
excited. At first the excitement seemed to hold 
something of regret; it would have been hard 
to say whether Jane’s mother was glad or sorry 
to find her second child inheriting her talent, 
intensified. 

“Jane, why Jane! You are extraordinarily 
good at this!” she cried. “You act well, really 
well , you know! And your voice! Your voice 
is going to be better than mine ever was ! Jane, 
Jane, what can you mean by it? You can sing and 
I cannot! Your life lies all before you, and mine 
is over and done with!” She dropped into a 
chair as she spoke, and burst into weeping, great 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 229 

sobs tearing her slender form, her thin shoulders 
heaving. 

Jane flew to her, with a distressed glance over 
toward Mary. 

“ Little girl-mother, don’t mind, please don’t 
mind!” Jane begged, on her knees before her 
mother, gathering her shaking little body into 
her firm young clasp. “I’ll never sing a note 
unless you want me to; truly I won’t! And 
don’t you see your life isn’t over and done with 
if I can do this? That’s nonsense, of course; I 
mean your life being over when you seem 
younger than we girls ! What I meant was 
about the singing. If I could sing, if I have a 
voice, it came from you, and when I sang it 
would be you singing still, through me. It 
would be beautiful, I think, if it were so, be- 
cause then you would go singing on and on, 
when you thought you’d never sing again! If 
I sang you could say: there’s my dear voice 
that I loved so and never expected to hear 
again! Jane’s taken it out to exercise it for 
me! And when you wanted to sing, you could 
say: Jane, use my voice for me; I want to sing 
‘Good-bye, Sweet Day,’ or whatever you would 
sing that special minute. Couldn’t you feel 
that way about it? It would be so lovely! 


230 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


But if you’d rather, I’d take a clam vow right 
away and keep it, never to sing any more than a 
clam does, humming in my bed — do clams sing 
in their clam beds, do you suppose?” 

Mrs. Garden’s moods were beginning to be 
less amazing to her girls; they changed with 
darting rapidity, swinging from despair to laugh- 
ter at a word. Now she sat up and laughed, a 
little tremulously, but still she laughed, drying 
her eyes and hugging Jane with a funny childish 
little chuckle. 

“Jane, you’re a farce comedy! No wonder 
you act well — which is not the same as behaving 
well, miss! ‘A clam vow’ is an entirely new 
sort! And I certainly do not want you to take 
one. I see precisely what you mean by your 
voice being my proxy, my little glowing-haired 
poet, Jane, and it can be true; it is true; we’ll 
make it true! What dear children you are, all 
three of you! Mary, sweetheart, don’t look so 
troubled! It was bad, downright bad and 
wicked of me to cry like that. I’m happy now, 
truly. It was just a minute of wickedness! 
I felt as though I couldn’t bear it to hear Jane 
singing at less than half my age, and to know I 
was silenced forever ! It isn’t that I’m not glad 
Jane can sing, but that I’m sorry that I can’t! 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


231 


But Jane found the word to the enigma; she has 
shown me how to be glad, and I am glad! I’ll 
let you use my voice, Janie, just as long as you 
want to — or as long as you can! People can’t 
always sing as long as they want to, my dear! 
And I’ll try to remember it is mine, not yours. 
I’m going to train you just as well as I know 
how; you must not sing much for two years. 
Then you shall be taught by better masters 
than I. I’m delighted ! My voice, that I loved 
best of all earthly things, is not gone, but is 
transferred. And here’s another thing, chil- 
dren: if I had not come home when I could no 
longer use my voice I should never have known 
that it had been smuggled into the states — for 
I’m certain you didn’t pay the duty on it, Jane!” 

“Not a penny, madrina!” declared Jane, 
with a glad look at Mary. This was the first 
time that their mother had spoken of her return 
to Vineclad as “coming home.” 

“I think it was brought in, past the customs 
officers, in a baby’s shirt, and that they never 
noticed it, for I’ve had it ever so long, and when 
I found it, it was under a little soft shirt you put 
on me without noticing it, either; I believe you 
thought it a little squeaky squawk.” 

From this hour there was a change in Mrs. 


232 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Garden; she seemed happier, and her eyes fol- 
lowed Jane with new interest, she threw herself 
into the preparations for the Garden of Dreams 
with new zest. Jane’s brilliant beauty, her deli- 
cate grace, her luminous pallor, her radiant hair 
seemed to enthrall her mother, now that she 
had found them the casket of her lost voice. 
For Jane’s pretty fancy took hold of her 
mother’s imagination; it was plain that she was 
beginning to feel that her voice actually did live 
on in Jane, and to be comforted by the thought. 
Mary was still her mother’s comfort, her sweet 
reliance, as she was every one’s, but in Jane her 
mother seemed to find her own reincarnation. 

Thus, with new pleasure and enthusiasm, the 
rehearsals for the entertainment in the Gardens’ 
old garden went on toward its perfecting. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


“our acts our angels are, or good or ill” 

Vineclad bought tickets to the Garden of 
Dreams without stint. It had never suspected 
its own need of a Day Nursery, not even in its 
poorer neighbourhood, but it more than sus- 
pected its need of being entertained, and it 
aroused to seize its opportunity. 

“It will take more than Joel Bell to restore 
the garden after the entertainment,” said Flori- 
mel ruefully. 

“Oh, no!” cried Mary. “We wouldn’t have 
it if we thought so! Vineclad will keep to the 
paths and the grass, and the grass will spring 
up in the first rain, if it does get trodden down 
slightly. Little madrina, go away and rest; 
you look tired and you mustn’t be tired to-night, 
not the stage manager, costumer, dramatic and 
singer teacher, and leading lady!” 

“Why, I am all these things; isn’t it so, 
Mary?” cried Mrs. Garden, in childish glee. 

“And little toy-mother besides! Come along, 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


234 

little porcelain lady, and get rested,” said Jane, 
putting her arm around her mother’s willowy 
waist and drawing her along. 

“Jane found the word, Florimel; Jane always 
does!” cried Mary. “Our mother is just that, 
a little porcelain lady ! I’ve been trying to think 
ever since she came what it was that she made 
me want to say, and it’s Austin Dobson’s line: 
‘You’re just a porcelain trifle, belle Marquise.’” 

“Don’t know it,” said Florimel, too preoccu- 
pied to be interested in poetical labels and their 
suitability. “Can’t you come and see, once 
more, if all my costumes are right, Mary?” 

“I have a few last stitches to take on my 
Florence Nightingale dress; a red cross to sew 
on, and the cap isn’t right. I’ll do it in your 
room and look yours over at the same time, 
though we have made sure of yours over and 
over, Mellie,” said patient Mary. 

To do Florimel justice she usually aroused to 
see Mary’s readiness to serve when her hands 
were more than full. She did so now. Throw- 
ing her arms around her in a hug that was more 
expressive than considerate, she cried: 

“You dear old Mary-Job, you! Why don’t 
you say: ‘Get out with you, you selfish little 
black gypsy! I’ve got enough to do to attend 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


235 


to myself. Besides, you’ve been attended to! 
And, besideser , nobody will look at a snip like 
you when Jane and I are around!’ But no! 
You tell me you’ll ‘look me over again’ while you 
sew your own things — at the eleventh hour! 
But you won’t; I’ll ask Anne. Only she wouldn’t 
know! I’ll get Jane — if I can. I’m always 
vowing I won’t torment you, Molly darling, 
but you’re so unselfish you spoil me!” . 

“What nonsense, Mel! As if I didn’t just 
love to fuss over you! Come along,” Mary in- 
sisted, and, in spite of her protests, Florimel 
was only too glad to go with her. The Garden 
of Dreams was to begin at half -past eight; now, 
in August, the dusk was deep enough at that 
hour to allow effectual lighting of the myriad 
lanterns which everywhere were to illumine the 
old garden. 

The spectators — that was not the word for 
them, either! Those who had purchased tickets 
allowing them to take part in the game of the 
evening came, for the most part, early. 

Mrs. Moulton proved to be far more useful 
in her own proper — exceedingly proper — person 
than she would have been could she have been 
persuaded to appear in costume in the Cin- 
derella group. The players had but the cloudi- 


236 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


est notion of what was expected of them. Mrs. 
Moulton, acting as hostess, or a reception com- 
mittee of one, supplemented the boys who gave 
out pads and pencils. She explained that the 
players were expected to set down the names of 
the characters whom, later on, they would meet 
wandering in the garden, each name opposite 
the number on the pad corresponding to the 
number which would be conspicuously worn by 
the actor; that they had the privilege of ask- 
ing questions from the actors, intended to draw 
forth clues to their impersonations, questions 
which the actors were obliged, by the rules of 
the game, to answer, but only if they were 
capable of being answered indirectly. For in- 
stance, if one met a girl with a crook one would 
not be permitted to say point blank: 4 ‘Are you 
little Bo-peep?” compelling the bereft shep- 
erdess to answer: “Yes.” 

As the darkness dropped down over the gar- 
den, warm, fragrant, heavy with August dew, 
it absorbed and gave back the delicious blended 
odours from the garden: cedar and juniper and 
box, white lilies, alyssum, mignonette, monthly 
roses and hardy tea roses, heliotrope, sweet peas, 
pungent marigolds, phlox, nasturtiums, and 
many more living jars of fragrance, uncovered 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


237 


to the sky as perpetual incense, and blended with 
the tonic scents from the herb garden, sage, 
savory, marjoram, thyme, and all the rest. 

While the lantern-lighting was in progress 
the old garden filled with arrivals; no one was 
late, every one was curious to see what awaited 
them. There was a small but excellent little 
stringed orchestra, imported to Vineclad upon 
Mrs. Garden’s insistence; she would not listen 
to suggestions of less competent musicians to 
supply the music. The pulsating harp strings, 
the poignant sweetness of the violins and viols, 
the accents of the mandolins emphasizing the 
flowing melody with their metallic tinkle, filled 
the garden with music as suited to the fragrance- 
laden dusk, the lantern lights twinkling every- 
where, as the birdsongs in the morning would 
be suited to the young light of dawn. 

As the guests strolled through the beauty, 
admiring it, yet speculating on what was to 
follow, there began to wander through the 
paths other figures, each in costume, fantastic, 
pretty, or ugly, but always suggestive, and each 
of these figures wore on his breast or upon hers 
a number, or, sometimes, this number was worn 
upon the arm, when the design of the costume 
did not permit it upon the breast. 


238 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


The first of these impersonations were not par- 
ticularly hard to guess. Jane, as Joan of Arc, 
with shield and sword and a rapt look on her 
intent face, for instance, was obviously the Maid 
of Orleans, and so beautiful that it was clear why 
her soldiers would follow where she led. 

“ Little Miss Netticoat” also was easy to 
guess, though one of the prettiest figures of the 
evening. But there were many baffling im- 
personations; some hard to guess because they 
were so definite, plainly representing a particular 
and unmistakable character which eluded mem- 
ory; others equally hard to guess because they 
were so indefinite. A continental uniform, for 
instance, might cover the representative of 
Washington, or of any of his generals, and a lady 
in a formal court dress of a hundred and twenty- 
five years ago might be almost any one in France, 
England, or the newly evolved Western republic. 

The game grew exciting on both sides, actors’ 
and guessers’. Questions flew through the air, 
as hard to dodge as shrapnel. The hard-pressed 
actors were confronted with posers, relentlessly 
assailing them, backed up by a pencil, ready 
poised over a pad, to set down the name which 
a careless, too hasty answer might betray. 

“It isn’t fair!” cried Florimel, driven into a 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


239 


corner in her Carmen costume by rapid-fire 
questioning of six people at once, drawn up be- 
fore her. “What a lot of you to think up ques- 
tions and only one of me to answer them ! It’s 
worse than setting limed twigs for crabs!” 

But Florimel was hard to entrap; her nimble 
wit was at its best, excited as she was by the 
marvellously good time she was having. Bril- 
liant Florimers dark hair and eyes, and white 
and crimson cheeks, made her such a glowing 
picture in her pretty costumes that she could 
not help knowing what a success she made and 
having a good time in proportion to it. 

Audrey Dallas proved helpless under fire of 
cross-examination, but Win’s legal training, 
or quick wit, or both, stood him in good stead 
in answering correctly, but not relevantly. He 
therefore made Audrey’s defencelessness a pre- 
text for hovering near her, slyly to hint mislead- 
ing answers to her. Even though Audrey was 
supposed to be looking toward college with an 
eye of single purpose, the Garden girls were sure 
she was not sorry that her inability to parry 
questions kept Win at her side. Win was quite 
well worth looking at in his various roles, and 
laughter followed at his heels wherever he and 
Audrey went. 


240 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Sweet Mary was lovely as Milton’s daughter, 
guiding the poet’s steps. Mr. Moulton made 
a good foil to her fresh loveliness in his black 
scholar’s gown, though Mary told him that he 
“looked more like William Dean Howells than 
John Milton.” 

Later in the evening Mary, as Ruth Pinch, 
charmed and puzzled every one by bustling 
through the paths, in evidence of being busy, 
dressed in an old-fashioned flowered muslin, 
with short sleeves and round neck, and carrying 
in her hand a yellow mixing bowl in which she 
stirred hard with a kitchen spoon, to represent 
Ruth Pinch’s famous “beefsteak pudding.” 

Yet of them all, players of the game and 
actors in it, none was happier, prettier, more 
charming, none as successful in acting as Mrs. 
Garden. Costume succeeded costume, as role 
succeeded role for her assuming, a wide range of 
characters, each as perfectly sustained as the 
other. As Ariel she flitted along the paths so 
lightly that she conveyed the sense of flight. 
As the White Rabbit, whom Alice knew, she 
hopped along with sidewise, timid glances, for 
all the world like a magnified bunny. As Blue- 
eyed Mary, of the old song, she wistfully vended 
flowers, slow of step and drooping with fatigue 



< t 


99 


THOSE WHO KNEW HER BEST WERE AMAZED AND A LITTLE STARTLED 












































































HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


241 


and hunger. As the Marchioness she flaunted 
herself pertly in rags and with a smutty face, 
carrying her cribbage board, ready for a game 
with Dick Swiveller. And as Little Miss Muf- 
fet she was incredibly childlike and lovely in a 
Kate Greenaway costume, carrying her bowl and 
spoon on her way to look for a tuffet to sit on to 
eat “her curds and whey,” and murmuring a 
little song under her breath, like a rhythmic chant 
of a happy child. 

“She’s perfectly wonderful!” Vineclad agreed. 
Even though there were Vineclad matrons who 
felt Mrs. Garden’s talent was unsuited to the 
mother of three big girls, however young a 
mother she might be, still they all agreed that 
she “was wonderful.” 

The most beautiful picture of the evening, 
the impersonation longest remembered in Vine- 
clad, was Jane as Ophelia, however. Jane 
threw herself into her part with such self-for- 
getfulness, such enthusiasm, talent so extraordi- 
nary in so young a girl, that those who knew her 
best were amazed and a little startled. All in 
white, with her masses of red-gold hair falling 
around her, crowned by a wreath of old-time 
garden flowers, intertwisted with long sprays of 
wild flowers, which straggled downward and 


242 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


mingled with her marvellous hair; her pale face 
uplifted, her eyes set with an unseeing look in 
their dilation; her hands holding up her apron 
filled with flowers, which she lifted and dropped, 
and lifted again, sometimes kissing them, some- 
times throwing them from her; singing the Wil- 
low Song from Othello, and singing it with a 
voice as pure and true as it was high and sweet, 
singing it with an abandonment of grief that 
proved Jane’s talent, for she had not yet reached 
the sixteenth of her happy years, and under- 
stood heartbreak only through her intuitions, 
Jane glided on through the garden paths toward 
the fountain. No one stopped her to ask a 
question; she could be none other than Ophelia, 
mad. Conversation died out, the murmur of 
voices everywhere was silent, as the guests fell ♦ 
into groups to watch this enthralling young love- 
liness pass, and to listen to the pathos of her 
despairing song. 

“ She’s more than I ever would have dared to 
dream of being!” cried Mrs. Garden in an 
ecstasy. “She can soar higher than I could 
ever have climbed; she is an artist! Think of 
her now, but fifteen! Oh, I’m so glad, glad, 
that one of my girls is Jane!” 

“And you can be just as glad that only one is 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


243 


Jane,” retorted Mrs. Moulton dryly. “She’s a 
dear girl, very fine and dear; I don’t mean that 
she’s not, but I do mean that the old-fashioned 
talents, like Mary’s, make everybody happier 
than Jane’s cleverness can — not excepting, in- 
deed, first of all! — their possessor.” 

“Jane is devoted, generous, unselfish, as well as 
clever,” said Mrs. Garden. “Of course I know 
you think so. I appreciate Mary, or appreciate 
her as well as I am able. I realize that no one can 
sound Mary’s depths in as short a time as I’ve 
known her. But you must let me rejoice in 
having one artist daughter, Mrs. Moulton, 
please! It is such a great thing to be a true 
artist!” 

“I doubt that it makes a woman happier. 
I want Jane to find her happiness in simple 
things — for her own sake. Don’t foster an am- 
bition for a career in her, Lynette,” Mrs. Moul- 
ton urged. 

Mrs. Garden laughed. “I fancy it wouldn’t 
alter anything, dear Mrs. Moulton,” she said. 
“Jane will find her own level. Do look at her, 
kneeling by the fountain! Would you not be 
sure it was a deep, dark pool, and that she was 
going to her mad death? Ophelia ends there; 
they must all guess it. But what a child!” 


244 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“They” did “all guess it.” There was the 
silence that is the truest applause for an instant, 
then the garden rang with shouts of: “Ophelia! 
Ophelia!” to the accompaniment of clapping 
hands. 

Mary had urged that Joel Bell be bidden to 
bring his children to see the festival which he 
had, indirectly, suggested. The three little 
Bells were small, in varying degrees of smallness, 
down to the baby, who, Joel had said: “Was 
’most two.” They ranged from her up past 
another girl of four, to the boy, who was six. 
Tucked away in a safe vantage corner for see- 
ing, unseen, the three small Bells had bewilder- 
edly watched many things and people which 
they could by no means understand, had en- 
joyed the music, but had finally settled down to 
adoration of the lanterns swaying in the breeze, 
as the crown and glory, the wonder and beauty, 
beyond all the other beautiful wonders which 
enveloped their awe-struck minds. The baby 
was too young for her awe to strike lastingly 
deep. Several times she escaped her sister’s and 
brother’s competent vigilance and sallied forth 
from their post, only to be caught and brought 
back, her protests muffled, not soothed, by firm 
little hands clapped over her wide-open mouth. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


245 


Just at the end of the entertainment, when 
those appointed to the task were getting ready 
to collect lists from the guessers, count up cor- 
rect entries after the numbers, and award the 
prizes for the three best lists, Nina Bell, the 
baby, still wide awake when the two older little 
Bells were getting muffled by sleepiness, saw 
her chance and escaped once more, this time 
successfully. She toddled along, her covetous 
eyes on the swinging lanterns quite beyond the 
reach of her hands, but not of her ambition. 

“Everything comes to him who waits” is 
more or less true. Small Nina had been waiting 
all the evening to see one of those luminous 
bright things close by. As she went wistfully 
along the path now, a cord from which a line 
of the lanterns was suspended dropped from 
the farther branch to which it had been at- 
tached and fell at her feet. 

Here they were, not one but eight glowing, 
queer flowers thrown by kind fairies to her 
fingers! With a crow of joy Nina stooped clum- 
sily — for stooping still involved for her a drop on 
to her hands rather than a bending of her body 
— and began to examine her prize. They were 
as satisfactory, seen at close range, as they had 
been at a distance. Suddenly, however, as she 


246 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


poked and prodded them and lifted one, they 
altered. They were no longer flowers, with a 
single heart of flame in each; they were blazing 
from one to the other, and Nina held the cord. 
Instantly her own short white frock blazed 
with them. She gave a frightened scream. 
Then some one caught her, held her close, threw 
her down, beat out the flames with bare hands 
and rolled the little body in the grass, lying 
close over it. And this was Mary Garden. 

By a coincidence Mary’s final role had been 
Florence Nightingale; she wore on her arm the 
Red Cross of the hospital as she flew to the child’s 
rescue, no one else at the instant near enough 
to render aid. With sure presence of mind and 
recklessness of her own danger, Mary beat out 
the flames enveloping the little creature, and 
saved her! But her own dress was a thin white 
cotton material, she wore a thin white apron, 
and her deep cuffs and collar were thinner than 
the regulation cuffs and collar of the nurse. 
In saving the child Mary’s costume caught fire. 
Though she threw herself upon the ground it 
was not smothered. Win ran to her, his face 
distorted with agony, in his hand a coat from 
some one’s continental uniform. Mark rushed 
after him, not keeping up, for the halting foot 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


247 


impeded him and he hated it as he had never 
before hated his impediment. He had snatched 
up a rug which Mrs. Moulton had been standing 
on all the evening; with it he made his best speed 
toward Mary. All the other men ran toward 
her when the alarm spread, but Win and Mark 
reached her first, and they wrapped her in the 
coat and the rug, tearing from her the flaming 
garments beneath them which threatened her. 

The cries of little Nina had turned attention 
in that direction; to this alone Mary owed her 
chance to live. Only her outer clothing, her 
dress and apron, caught at first; help reached her 
before her inner garments had led the fire to 
her tender flesh. Yet, fight as they best could, 
with many hands hastening to help Win and 
Mark, the blazing materials could not be ex- 
tinguished till Mary was badly burned. She 
lay in merciful unconsciousness upon the grass, 
the dark rug and blue and yellow coat envelop- 
ing her, her sweet face unmarred, as her head 
in a hollow of the grass let it turn up, white and 
drawn, to the star-strewn sky. 

“What an end to our evening!” groaned Mr. 
Moulton, raising Mrs. Garden, who had fallen, 
half fainting, beside Mary upon the grass. 

“Now I shall go mad; not act it!” Jane said 


248 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


fiercely, and Win turned to put his arm around 
her. Jane violently threw him from her. “Don’t 
any one dare to try to comfort me. Mary! 
Mary!” she screamed. 

The love between these two sisters was espe- 
cially close and strong. Mary heard Jane’s cry 
and her eyelids fluttered. 

“It’s all right, Janie,” she murmured. “Hurts 
— a — little. Don’t — worry.” 

“Take her up, boys, as carefully as you can, 
and carry her into the house. There’s no time 
to lose getting a doctor. Any one sent for one? ” 
said Mr. Moulton. 

“Mr. Dallas went, in his car, tearing!” said 
Anne Kennington, who had come from the 
house, and now knelt, kissing Mary’s shoes, 
where she thought her touch could not hurt 
her. “My lamb, my lamb! My Mary sweet!” 
she sobbed. 

They raised Mary, and the lifting brought her 
back to full consciousness and to agony. But 
though it wrung their hearts to give her pain, 
no one could save her from suffering. If only 
they could save her life! 

The little procession passed Florimel in a 
faint at the corner of the path. Mrs. Moulton 
lingered to attend to her. Mrs. Garden, hardly 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


249 


able to walk, was helped homeward by Mr. 
Moulton. Jane walked, erect and ghastly, with 
great dilated eyes, a white, set face, and her 
masses of hair gleaming under Ophelia’s mad 
wreath. Win and Mark, with two other young 
men to help them in case their arms weakened, 
carried Mary slowly, as carefully as they could, 
but she moaned at every step. 

Thus in pain, and with tragedy threatening, 
ended the beautiful evening of the Garden of 
Dreams. 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


“fragrant the fertile earth after soft 
showers” 

Mary’s injuries were serious. “Not neces- 
sarily dangerous, but decidedly serious,” Doc- 
tor Hall explained to the tortured Gardens. 

“May be dangerous?” he echoed Jane’s 
question. “Surely, Jane. It all depends upon 
how Mary progresses. It is perfectly possible 
for her to develop dangerous symptoms. It is 
for us to do our best to prevent it. Mary is so 
unselfishly loving toward you all that I believe 
she will not give you pain in this! It wouldn’t 
be like her! In any case, it is something to re- 
joice over that the flames did not lick her sweet 
old-time face. Mary always has looked to me 
like an old daguerreotype.” 

Jane turned away with impatience hard to 
restrain. Doctor Hall had been their physician 
as long as the Garden girls could remember, 
longer, but Jane did not want to hear him speak 
of Mary’s face. She did not want him to speak 

250 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


251 


of anything except Mary’s condition. There 
was nothing left in the world to speak of nor 
to think of but that; all else was maddeningly 
unreal and intrusive. Mary lay wrapped in 
bandages, motionless, and, except for a few 
words feebly spoken occasionally, silent, pa- 
tient. They did not know whether she slept 
most of the time, or lay enduring, weak, yet 
strong in submissive patience. The doctor said 
that there could not be a better patient. Mary 
gave herself up to being taken care of with the 
complete resignation that best cooperates with 
science and nursing. 

Mr. Moulton had insisted upon a nurse for 
Mary, though Jane and Anne begged to be al- 
lowed to take care of her, promising entire obedi- 
ence to Doctor Hall. But Mr. Moulton knew 
that it would be too hard upon those who loved 
her to dress Mary’s wounds. The nurse, kind, 
interested, faithful, was installed; Jane, Anne, 
Mrs. Garden were spared seeing how dreadfully 
hurt their beloved girl was. 

For that Mary was a beloved girl to all three 
her danger proved. Anne’s devotion needed 
no proof; Jane’s adoring love for her sister had 
begun when she, the little baby, watched the 
big baby — for they were babies together — and 


252 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


wriggled to her as soon as she could creep. 
Florimel paid Mary the worship of a little sister 
for an older one, a tempestuous nature for a 
calm one, a generously ardent heart for one who 
deserved its best love. But now that Mary lay 
like the pitiful mummy of herself, now that the 
house was sadly deprived of her pervading un- 
selfish presence, Mrs. Garden showed how 
closely this eldest daughter had grown into her 
love. 

Jane prowled all day long, and the greater 
part of the night, up and down the hall, just 
beyond Mary’s door, or lay prostrate on the floor 
in the next room, her ear against the wall to 
catch a sound. Florimel, always restless, sat for 
hours on the top step of the stairs, clasping 
her knees with her hands, also listening, listening, 
all day long listening. Anne often joined Flori- 
mel here; Abbie came at intervals to ask: “Any- 
thing?” Then to go solemnly away, disap- 
pointed by the inevitable “No.” Win frankly 
gave up all attempt to work or to study during 
these days. He marched up and down the 
garden, often with Mark, whom Mr. Moulton 
released from duty. Indeed the older man was 
utterly unable to go on with his great book. 

“What difference can it make about the flora 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


253 


of New York State, if our sweetest blossom is 
stricken?” he demanded, drawing fiercely on his 
extinguished pipe. Mrs. Moulton sat through- 
out these anxious days holding her hands, re- 
straining nervousness by a great effort, wholly 
unable to accomplish any task. 

All this was to be expected, for Mary was 
dearest of all earthly things to each of these, 
even to Mark, though no one but himself knew 
this. 

But Mrs. Garden became Mary’s mother in 
full as she waited, watching, praying, fearing, 
to know whether she might keep her. No 
longer was she the Garden girls’ “little toy- 
mother,” as they had caressingly called her. 
She could not change her nature and become, 
suddenly, strong in body and dependence. All 
her life she must be the petted, reliant creature 
which habit had made her, but she proved that 
she could love her child and suffer keenly in the 
dread of losing such a daughter as Mary was. 
She it was who sat beside Mary’s bed, cease- 
lessly watching her dear face for a contortion of 
pain, or for a clue to a wish, or for the smile with 
which Mary tried to cheer her troubled family. 

“I’ll be all right, little mother,” she said 
feebly one day. “Why don’t you go to drive? 


254 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


You are always here. Did that baby — is the 
Bell baby — better?” 

Mrs. Garden knew what the word was which 
Mary could not bring herself to say. 4 ‘The 
Bell baby was not badly burned, Mary. You 
saved her. She has suffered merely surface 
burns. She is in bandages, but not hurt as you 
are! Oh, Mary darling, and you are so much 
more valuable ! ” Mrs. Garden could not repress 
the cry. Mary gave her the ghost of her own 
smile. 

“You mean you all love me best! You can’t 
tell about value. The Bell baby may do fine 
things before she is eighteen. I’m glad she is 
living,” Mary managed to say. 

“You saved her life. I never expect to save 
a life in all my own life ! A whole chime of Bell 
babies couldn’t ring the peal you do, Molly 
darling!” said Jane, who had come into the room. 

Mary smiled at her, a better smile than she 
had heretofore achieved. 

“Prejudice!” she whispered. 

Slight as this encouragement was, Jane went 
away cheered. Surely taking interest in the 
Bell baby and discussing comparative value of 
lives must mean that Mary was better! Yet 
after this the fever which the doctor had feared 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


255 


set in and Mary grew worse. At times she 
knew no one, but begged unbearably to be 
taken home to her “dear old garden/’ or im- 
plored for Jane, Florimel, or Anne, as the case 
might be. She never recalled her mother in her 
delirium, and, though Mrs. Moulton, moved to 
pity for the girlish mother for whom she had 
secretly felt a little contempt, carefully ex- 
plained that Mary’s mind turned back to her 
not-distant childhood, in which her mother had 
no part, that it was not the Mary of that sum- 
mer forgetting her, Mrs. Garden was not con- 
soled. Finding herself excluded from Mary 
now by her voluntary absence from her as she 
grew up, showed Mrs. Garden, as nothing else 
could have shown her, that the loss of her little 
girls’ childhood was a heavy price to pay for the 
honour the world had heaped upon her. 

“Rain, rain, rain!” Mary moaned. And 
again: “Rain, rain, rain!” repeated over and 
over, thrice each time, sometimes for a weary 
hour. Occasionally the lament was varied by 
the cry that Mary’s garden “was burning up.” 

Jane knelt and said clearly, close to her ear, 
hoping that she might understand: “Mel and I 
take care of it, Mary dearest. It is watered and 
all right.” 


256 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


But Mary’s head moved, distressed, and she 
repeated her trilogy: “Rain, rain, rain!” 

There had been a drought of some weeks, the 
garden was suffering under it, although Joel 
Bell attached the hose to the garden reservoir 
and watered it. Joel was in utter anguish of 
mind over the disaster through which his child 
had so nearly died and Mary, perhaps, was to 
die for her. 

“ ’Tain’t in nature not to be glad Nina May 
Bell is saved, but, my soul an’ body, you’ve 
no sort of an idee how I feel about your girl 
bein’ so bad hurt for her, ” he repeated. 

Doctor Hall said that it might be that a rain- 
fall would benefit Mary. In her delirium she 
plainly mingled the suffering of her burns with 
the remembrance of the drought that parched 
her beloved blossoms. She was so sensitive, he 
added, to atmospheric conditions that she might 
be harmed by the dryness in the air. 

After this Jane and Florimel watched the sky 
for a cloud as the shipwrecked sailor in the desert 
island of fiction scans it for a sail. On the third 
day after Doctor Hall had said that rain might 
help Mary toward recovery, they saw the fleecy 
heads of clouds in the west, white at their base, 
golden in the summer sunshine on their tops, 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


257 


the clouds which look as if one could plunge 
into them and fill the hands with their masses, 
the clouds which presage thunder. Later in the 
day the sky darkened into a metallic, cloudless 
sheet, blackened in the west to murky thick- 
ness, with a hint of yellow. 

“It’s coming, madrina! Do you really think 
it will matter to Mary?” Jane implored. 

“Oh, Jane dear, how can one tell? And I’m 
dreadfully afraid of lightning!” Mrs. Garden 
cried. These days of awful anxiety had told 
on her; the little woman looked wan and thin. 
It was the first time in her life that she had ever 
been called upon to live intensely and to face a 
real grief. 

The storm broke with swift fury and raged 
till it had had its will of Vineclad. Then the 
electrical forces marched on, leaving behind 
them the steady, refreshing, permeating rain 
that the garden begged for, and for which its 
lover, Mary Garden, deliriously prayed. 

As if Doctor Hall had been right, Mary sank 
into silence after the rain set in and, for the first 
time in several days, lay still. The beneficent 
rain fell quietly all the rest of the day and all 
night. The garden revived under it, its bet- 
terment visible from the windows, and Mary 


258 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


slept, with its gentle lullaby playing on the piazza 
roof and window panes. The Gardens dared 
not be glad, yet relief sounded in each voice in 
the household. Mr. and Mrs. Moulton and 
Mark, coming over through the blessed wetness, 
plucked up heart a little. Mr. Moulton alluded 
to his book for the first time since Mary was 
burned. If Mary were to recover, then books 
and science would be once more possible, worth 
while. 

In the morning Mary opened her eyes and 
smiled into her mother’s, the ones in range with 
hers when she wakened. She touched her band- 
ages and drew her brows trying to recall their 
meaning. 

“Oh, now I know!” she said. “I remember. 
But I think I am better; I feel quite a different 
girl. Do you think I might have a nice little 
egg, madrina?” 

“Oh, Mary, Molly darling! oh, my sweet, 
sweet girl! You may have all the eggs in the 
world, and all the chickens!” cried Mrs. Gar- 
den, falling on her knees in a frenzy of grateful 

joy. 

Mary closed her eyes again with a tiny smile. 
“Too many — at once,” she murmured. Anne 
would not let any one but herself prepare the 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


259 


tray with Mary’s breakfast that morning. 
Jane and Florimel almost quarrelled with her 
for driving them off, but Anne was relent- 
less. 

“She’s been my child all her seventeen, going 
on eighteen, years, and I fed her and cared for 
her through every sickness she had. Now she’s 
asked for food I shall get her first breakfast ready, 
and that’s the end of it. You keep in mind how 
bad you wanted to do it, when you couldn’t, and 
wait on her hand and foot when you can, later 
on, when she’s getting about and tries to do for 
you two more than she should,” Anne delivered 
her ultimatum as she bustled about, getting 
out the little squat wedgewood teapot, the cream 
jug and sugar bowl that Mary had loved best as 
a child, and had called “Mr. and Mrs. Dumpie 
Short,” affectionately. 

It did not need Doctor Hall’s beaming face 
to tell the Garden household that Mary was 
better and was to stay with them. Neverthe- 
less that look on his face was a joy to see, after 
the anxiety that had been knitting it. 

“The best of the Garden girls is going to live 
on, Jane and Florimel,” he said. 

“With the worst of them!” cried Florimel, 
in a burst of happy tears. “Jane and I don’t 


260 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


care how high you put Mary above us. We 
know all about her / ” 

“Oh, well, I’ve seen worse little girls than you 
two, though Mary is about the sweetest maiden 
anywhere. That old word suits her, too. I’m 
happier than you can believe to tell you she’s 
safe. And her pretty face not touched, nor her 
fine hands scarred, beyond one mark that will 
last, on the right one. Her arms may be scarred. 
I think she may have to wear lace over them — 
when she goes to balls, I mean! But I had no 
hope, at first, of coming so near saving her from 
disfigurement.” 

“Lace sleeves don’t matter; Mary won’t get 
to many sleeveless parties in Vineclad,” said 
Florimel. “To think we’re talking about parties ! 
For Mary! Even if they had to be overall 
parties, it wouldn’t matter!” 

“Right-o, kiddo!” cried Win, with a choke. 
“Suppose — say. Doctor, how’ll we be glad 
enough?” 

“No need of telling any of you the best way 
to be glad,” said Doctor Hall, laying his hand 
on Win’s shoulder with a touch that expressed 
volumes. 

Jane and Florimel, returning to Mary’s room, 
found their mother down on the rug before the 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


261 


hearth with her scrapbooks and photograph 
cases, rapidly emptying them. The fire was 
laid on the hearth, ready for lighting, and Jane 
hastened over to her mother to ask what she 
was doing. Mrs. Garden looked up at Jane, 
and then at Florimel, with an expression on her 
face so new and different that both the girls were 
struck by it. 

“I’m going to burn it all,” she said, indicating 
her trophies with a comprehensive gesture. 

“Madrina! What for? Indeed you’re not!” 
exclaimed Jane. 

“This is what took me from you when you 
were babies; this is what kept me from you all 
your lovely childhood, which can never be re- 
called; this is what made me happy while you 
thought me dead. I hate it all, suddenly! If 
Mary had died” — she dropped her voice, glanc- 
ing toward the bed, but speaking fiercely in 
spite of the muffled tone — “if Mary had died, 
and I remembered how short a time I had known 
her, lovely, sweet, dear Mary, for the sake of 
this!” Mrs. Garden wrung her hands, unable 
to express her horror of what had been her 
pride. “There’s nothing in it all, children; 
there’s nothing in anything on earth that draws 
one away from right and beautiful motherhood. 


262 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Never forget that. I’ve been exactly what you 
called me: a toy-mother! I’m going to burn 
every foolish one of them!” 

“No, madrina, please!” said Jane, dropping 
down beside her mother. “You didn’t know 
when you went away from us ; you were so young. 
You had no idea that motherhood was more 
beautiful, made sweeter music, than your singing. 
Don’t be sorry; it all had to be. Do you suppose 
it matters how people learn things, provided 
they are not wicked? I imagine it’s just like 
school: different courses, you know. I’m a lot 
like you, and I can sing and act, you say. Per- 
haps I’d never have known that glory isn’t the 
best thing in the world if you hadn’t left us, and 
come home to tell us. Though I couldn’t have 
gone far from Mary! You mustn’t burn these 
things, little madrina! We want them; they’re 
our pride now, you see! It’s like bringing in 
the sheaves; these are the sheaves you’ve 
brought into the garden, and to your Garden 
girls. They’re ours now, madrina, because you 
are ours.” 

Mrs. Garden stared at Jane, amazed, then 
dropped her head on her shoulder with a long 
breath of relinquishment. 

“You are uncanny, Jane, positively,” she 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


263 


said, still speaking low, not to disturb Mary. 
“You can’t possibly know the things you seem 
to know, at your age! Every word you have 
said, Jane, is true and wise! How could you see 
all that? Mary is my sweet dependence, but 
you can be my teacher, thoughtful little Ruddy- 
locks! It’s your intuition, the intuition of an 
artist, Janie, that shows you truth. After all, 
it is a great thing to be an artist, isn’t it?” 

“Oh, yes!” Jane breathed fervently. “But 
of course I’ve got to be Jane Garden, in the best 
way I can be, before I’ve a right to think of any 
other label. I feel ages older since Mary was 
hurt.” 

“So do I, Jane, ages!” her mother agreed with 
her, as if they were girls together. “I never 
had much experience with life; I’ve been play- 
ing on its surface.” 

“You can’t have, can you, unless you’re 
awfully fond of some one — like all of us now, 
here together?” asked Jane, suddenly embar- 
rassed. 

“ More wisdom ! ” her mother exclaimed. “ One 
lives in experience and feeling, not in events.” 
She had spoken louder than she meant to, and 
Mary opened her eyes, and put out her hand. 
“Janie and Mel, I’m going to stay right here, 


264 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


and I can’t help being glad not to have even 
heaven without my chumsters,” she said. 

Florimel choked. When she was quite small, 
Mary had contracted the two words, “ chums” 
and “sisters” into “chumsters,” to express the 
peculiar closeness of the tie between the Gar- 
den girls. Florimel had always loved it. 
It was so sweet to hear it now, and to know that 
their intimate love was not to be cruelly sun- 
dered, that she ran out of the room to be tear- 
fully glad, alone, on the stairs. Jane jumped 
up, and ran over to Mary. 

“I couldn’t have heaven without you, Molly 
darling,” she said, putting her glowing head 
down beside Mary’s brown one on the pillow. 
“It wouldn’t be that, you know, if I saw you 
poking about the old garden beds down here 
without me. When are you coming out into 
the garden again, old Niceness?” 

“Soon, I think,” said Mary. “I don’t in- 
tend to be long getting back my strength.” 

Mary was as good as her word. Now that 
her painful wounds had begun to heal, her sound 
young flesh went on rapidly with its task of 
restoration. In two days less than two weeks 
Mary was dressed in a beautiful new gown, all 
white and blue and soft-falling drapery, which 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


265 


her mother had sent for, that she might come 
forth in it as an outer symbol of her recovery. 

Mr. and Mrs. Moulton, with Mark, were 
there in the garden to receive Mary, each with 
a little welcoming gift for the girl who was the 
heart of the Garden place, house, garden, and 
household. Mark’s gift was fringed gentians 
for which he had scoured the hills beyond Vine- 
clad, rising before the sun to gather the rare 
and beautiful blossoms. Mark murmured as he 
handed them to Mary, 4 ‘They were as blue as 
her eyes, and very like her.” 

The rain that had associated itself with Mary’s 
recovery in the minds of those who loved her 
had been followed by successive downfalls. 
The drought once broken, the earth received 
refreshment constantly. The garden was beau- 
tiful with the more gorgeous bloom of Sep- 
tember. Salvia blazed above dark-red cannas; 
the hedge of hollyhocks at the end of the longest 
garden vista shone like the mint; cosmos deli- 
cately triumphed in its last act of the summer 
pageant. Through it all came the persistent 
fragrance of alyssum and mignonette, faithful 
to the end, not to be dismayed that, after their 
long summer sweetness, tall and showy flowers 
overtopped them. 


266 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“How lovely it all is after the rain! And 
after the fire!” said Mary, with a little laugh 
that caught in her throat. “I’m so glad to 
come back to you, dear old garden!” 

“It is just as glad to get you back, daughter,” 
said Mr. Moulton, springing to forestall Win and 
Mark, and to help Mary into the lounging chair 
prepared for her. “The garden called us all 
together to tell you so, though it seems to me 
to need no spokesman.” 

“It never needed one, though it adds to it! 
But how it speaks ! I think it is fairly shouting, 
in reds and yellows and whites and purples: ‘The 
old Garden garden is glad to see you, Mary. 
It can’t quite spare one of its girls!’” said Mary, 
settling down with a sigh of utter content into 
her great chair and into the great love all things, 
animate and inanimate, around her bore her. 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


“implores the passing tribute of a sigh” 

“When Mary began recapturing her kingdom 
she seemed to take it by assault. You can see 
her jumping back to health since she got out 
into the garden again, Lynette,” said Win, 
watching the three Garden girls from the dining- 
room window. 

“She’s perfectly sound in health, so are Jane 
and Florimel; Jane is the least strong of the 
three. I’m so happy to see Mary’s colour coming 
back, to know she is safe, that I wonder at my- 
self, Win!” said Mrs. Garden. 

Win thought that she looked preoccupied. 

“Seems small wonder to me, Lynette,” he 
said. “I’d expect any one to be happy about 
that, let alone Mary’s mother.” 

“Oh, of course, if one reasons it out! But 
I’ve been so utterly outside domestic affairs 
always! I must go to write a note, Win, if you 
don’t mind. Lord Kelmscourt is sailing next 
week; he wants to come here before he goes.” 

267 


268 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Mrs. Garden gathered up her mail from the table 
and went toward the door. 

“Glad to see him, for my part,” said Win sin- 
cerely. “Is he to stay here, in this house?” 

“They were nice to me at Kelmscourt when 
I visited there.” Mrs. Garden’s reply conveyed 
an excuse. “Lord Wilfrid won’t stay on long; 
hardly a second night. Anne thought we should 
be able to manage it quite easily; so did the 
girls, though I think they looked dismayed.” 

Win heard her soft laugh as she went out of the 
door. The Garden girls were dismayed; they 
were discussing the expected guest that moment 
in the garden; Win had noticed from the win- 
dow that they looked solemn. 

“He is coming to ask her to be Lady Kelms- 
court,” said Jane decidedly. “He would not 
come for anything else. In novels they ‘run 
down to the country’ before they sail for India, 
or Africa, or some land where they are going to 
get a chance to earn glory in the army, or else to 
kill some animals who are attending to their 
own jungle affairs, not meddling with any one 
in such distant lands. Then they ask the hero- 
ine to marry them, so they’ll have courage to 
interfere with those none-of-their- business jun- 
gle folk, and she always does! I know!” 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 269 

Mary laughed, though she looked troubled. 
“You say ‘they’ do all this, and the heroine 
marries ‘them.’ How many of them does the 
heroine marry, Janie?” she asked. 

“One at a time, and one is quite enough,” in- 
sisted Jane, undaunted. 

“If madrina marries Lord Kelmscourt, I 
don’t see how I can bear it,” Florimel declared. 
“If, when we thought she was dead, we had 
heard she was alive and was Lady Kelmscourt, 
we should have been just as glad and just as 
excited as we could have been. Of course it 
would be pretty good fun to say, carelessly, to 
the other girls: ‘My mother, Lady Kelmscourt, 
did’ something or other. But it’s not the same 
when you’ve had her and loved her. There’s no 
use in my trying to think I’ll enjoy visiting 
Lady Kelmscourt’s English castle; I may, but 
what’s that? And I think just as Jane does 
that madrina will be a — countess, is it? What 
kind of a lord is Lord Kelmscourt? Madrina 
knows we can’t have garden parties in the 
winter, can’t even sit in the garden; she knows 
there won’t be anything, then, but the house. 
We like it, but Lord Kelmscourt has a palace, 
or a castle, or tower, or something. The 
moment she spoke of Lord Wilfrid’s coming, 


270 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


I said to myself: ‘Farewell, cute little ma- 
drina!”’ 

Mary sang significantly: “‘I have so loved 
thee, but could not, could not hold thee!’ I 
don’t see why you should bid her good-bye 
without waiting to find out whether she is going 
or not, Mel. She is altogether changed about 
Hollyhock House — and the Garden girls, for 
that matter! Perhaps she’ll stay with them. 
I’m anxious, but when one is anxious, there’s 
still hope; one isn’t sure of the worst. I’m sure, 
whatever happens, we shall not lose her, so 
we’ve got to be reconciled to keeping her as she 
likes best to be kept. We can’t be without her, 
really, though we may have to do without her — 
do you see that? It sounds like a riddle.” 

Mrs. Garden came down the steps, humming 
under her breath, looking so girlish and happy 
that her children’s faces grew proportionately 
long. 

“I was just writing Lord Wilfrid when he 
called me on the telephone,” she said. “He 
is coming, to-night. Do you think his room 
is as it should be, Mary? Anne says it is, 
and I hesitate about going to see; she might 
resent it.” 

“Oh, madrina, if Anne says a room is right, 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


271 


there’s no need of any one else giving it a 
thought!” laughed Mary. “I’ll look at it, and 
put flowers in it by and by. I don’t know how 
rooms should be prepared for lords, even though 
they were once chauffeurs ! In novels their 
rooms, all English rooms, seem to lay no stress 
on any furniture but a bath — valets bring in 
baths until one’s back aches. As that room has 
its bath and dressing-room, I shouldn’t know 
what other furniture to put into it.” 

“If the room is right for Mr. Moulton, for in- 
stance, it will be all Lord Kelmscourt could de- 
sire,” said Mrs. Garden, smiling at Mary. 
“Jane, I should like you to drive, when he is to 
be met; will you, dear? I am going to the sta- 
tion; we’ll all go, but would you mind driving 
the car?” 

“You’re afraid to drive with me, madrina,” 
Jane reminded her honestly. 

“Not so short a distance through these quiet 
streets. You look so much nicer than Bell on 
the front seat; your straight young back and 
shining hair is a pleasanter outlook for a guest 
than Bell’s outlines. Bell is not a particularly 
safe driver yet. You don’t mind, Jane?” Mrs. 
Garden pleaded. 

“Not if you are anxious to have Lord Reims- 


272 HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 

court look at the back you like best.” Jane as- 
sented so unwillingly that her mother glanced 
at her, with a laugh in her eyes to see how sul- 
lenly Jane’s eyes glowed under her long lashes, 
and how the corners of her short upper lip pulled 
down. 

The long, graceful lines of the Garden car 
could not surmount the gloom on the faces 
of all its passengers, save one, on the way to the 
station to meet Lord Kelmscourt. It was a car 
of a make that always suggests pleasure, its 
lines are so sweeping, so elegant. But to-day 
it looked as though it bore three youthful chief 
mourners. Jane still sullenly unhappy, Flori- 
mel gloomy and angry, Mary so intent upon 
making the best of it that her form of melan- 
choly was the most depressing of all. 

Mrs. Garden seemed to see nothing of all 
this; she chattered and laughed, and was ani- 
matedly blithe, gowned in her most becoming 
way, her hat and its plumes so shading her face 
that she looked more than ever her daughters’ 
eldest sister. 

In spite of their disposition to regard Lord 
Wilfrid as their natural enemy, the Garden girls 
could not help admitting to themselves that he 
had an attractive face and air as he came briskly 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


273 


down the platform, carrying his own bag, and 
smiling a welcome to his waiting escort, though 
they were not minded to welcome him. 

Mrs. Garden received him with pretty cor- 
diality and Mary nobly supplemented her. Jane 
was not able to maintain her forbidding manner 
in the light of this guest’s frank pleasure at seeing 
her again and finding her driving the big car, in 
which art he had given her the first lesson. 
Florimel thawed a little, also, in this warmer air, 
compelled additionally by the laws of hospitality. 
So they drove homeward under an invisible, but, 
to Mrs. Garden, a perceptible, flag of truce. 

“Mrs. Garden wrote me of your splendid 
courage. Miss Garden, and of its cruel result. 
My word, but you’re a plucky girl ! I’m no end 
glad you’ve come through so well. I was greatly 
distressed while they were all fearful you mightn’t 
get off with suffering for a time, I assure you,” 
Lord Kelmscourt said. 

“Thank you, Lord Kelmscourt,” Mary re- 
plied. “It was not pluck that made me try 
to help that baby; it was seeing her afire. 
No one could have kept away from her. I am 
deeply thankful that I was not seriously harmed.” 

“So he knew when I was so ill; madrina wrote 
him of her trouble,” Mary thought, as she an- 


274 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


swered him, and, glancing toward Jane, she saw 
that Jane was making mental note of this fact 
also. 

There was a fire on the hearth that night, not 
needed, but delightful to sit before after the ex- 
cellent little dinner, which Anne provided, had 
been enjoyed. Win had not been under con- 
straint in welcoming Lord Kelmscourt; there 
were no reservations in his mind when he told 
him, truthfully, how glad he was to see him 
again. 

“There’s the telephone! Excuse me, ma- 
drina, please,” said Mary, rising to get the 
message. “Oh, Mrs. Moulton!” they heard her 
in the hall, saying into the receiver, as innocently 
as if this call had not been prearranged between 
herself and her guardian’s wife. “Why, yes, I 
think we can go for a while. Lord Kelmscourt 
is here. All of us? Jane, Florimel, Win? 
I’ll tell them, Mrs. Moulton. We’ll be there 
right away if mother doesn’t mind. Good- 
bye.” Machiavellian Mary hung up the re- 
ceiver and returned to the group by the library 
fireside, innocent and sweet. 

“Madrina, Mrs. Moulton asks if we may all 
go over to her for a short time. Will you mind ? 
Will Lord Kelmscourt mind if “the children’ 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


27 5 


run away to play for an hour or so?” Mary 
asked, with a great effort to keep her manner un- 
conscious at the last words, but feeling a look of 
guilt creep into her eyes. 

“Go if you like, Mary. Please don’t be long. 
I want Lord Kelmscourt to know you better, 
to be able to tell his sister, who is a dear friend 
of mine, what each of my girls is like; he has 
known Jane and Florimel, when he brought 
them here in the car, but you he has seen but 
little,” Mrs. Garden answered her. 

Lord Kelmscourt had laughed when Mary 
made her request. Now he arose, and crossed 
the room to hold the door open for the three 
young girls as they passed through it. 

“I fancy that I know Miss Mary better than 
she imagines that I do,” he said, his pleasant 
blue eyes so full of mischievous kindness that 
Mary’s dropped before their gaze. “I think 
that she would be a generous foe,” he added, and 
Mary knew that her ruse, which her mother had 
accepted without criticism, was transparent to 
her guest. 

“I’m not going, Mary,” Jane announced, 
after the three, with Win, were safely outside 
the door. “As if I didn’t know you asked Mrs. 
Moulton to call us up, and tell us to come over, 


276 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


so he’d have a chance to talk to madrina! It’s 
all right; we’ve got to get out of the way, and 
let him steal her, but I’m going right up to my 
room. I don’t want to go anywhere to talk and 
behave.” 

“Nor I,” Florimel echoed. “Jane and I will 
go upstairs ; they’ll never know. When you come 
back, come in at the side door and whistle 
up the back stairs, Win. We’ll hear and come 
down, as if we’d been with you, but I couldn’t 
see a soul while I knew my little toy-mother was 
getting stolen, just as Jane says. My gracious! 
People lock up their spoons!” Florimel added 
with bitter disgust. 

“Do you mean to imply that this Englishman 
is spoony?” Win suggested, but Florimel could 
not smile. She stalked upstairs, shaking her 
head, its black braid of hair appropriate to the 
mourning stamped on the handsome little face 
below it. 

Mary and Win went on their way, therefore, 
without the others. 

“I’m glad your hands aren’t scarred, Mary,” 
Win said, taking one of them to draw it through 
his arm. “I’ve always been fond of your capa- 
ble, shapely hands, my dear. That mark on 
the right one isn’t going to show. There’s ro- 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


277 


mance in the air, Molly darling! Do you know 
I think that Audrey can see me with her opera 
glasses screwed down to a shorter range than she 
could before the Garden of Dreams came off? 
Sometimes I’m tempted to imagine that Audrey 
begins to think of me as a possible rival to Welles- 
ley! Do you?” 

Mary laughed and squeezed Win’s arm with 
the beautiful hand which he was glad to know 
was unmarred. “To tell the truth, Win dearest, 
I haven’t noticed these symptoms of better sight 
in Audrey. But none of us were one bit anxious 
about her being blind. I’d like to know why she 
wouldn’t care for you, you splendid old Winches- 
ter-brother-uncle ! I’ve no doubt you’re right,” 
she declared. 

“I’m not going to try to get in the way of her 
college,” said Win, thanking Mary with a pres- 
sure on the hand in his elbow. “But I’d like 
to be visible to her, and to know I stood some 
chance when she came home again.” 

“Mercy!” said Mary involuntarily. “All 
that time! Audrey won’t graduate; she’ll cut 
off half the course. Perhaps I oughtn’t to say 
so, girls ought to stand by one another, but 
you’re not conceited, Win, so I’m going to tell 
you that all of the girls feel sure Audrey likes 


278 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


you a great deal, and only seems to like her col- 
lege plan better, because she’s so sure of you. 
There; it’s out! Of course Audrey honestly 
longs to study; I don’t mean she doesn’t,” added 
Mary hastily. 

The call on Mr. and Mrs. Moulton was a 
failure. Mary’s jwhole mind was turned back- 
ward to the hearthside at home, where she knew 
that the Englishman was doing his best to urge 
her little mother to leave her fireside, and come 
to preside over his dignified and important house. 

“How long ought we stay, do you think, Win?” 
Mary asked after a half-hour, and Mr. Moulton 
lay back in his chair to laugh at her. 

“‘The Considerate Daughter, or The Tables 
Turned,’ a farce in one act, by Miss Mary Gar- 
den, with the author in the title role!” he chuc- 
kled, turning to his wife to share his amusement. 

“Really, Mary, there is no reason why you 
should feel called upon to smooth the way to an 
event which you dread,” observed Mrs. Moul- 
ton. 

“It isn’t that, so much,” said candid Mary. 
“I want to feel sure that I didn’t act as horrid 
as I feel about it; that’s one thing. And an- 
other is, if, by great good luck, madrina should 
decide to stay with us I’d want to feel we got her 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


279 


honestly; that we hadn’t tried to keep her by 
tricks.” 

“That’s the way to feel,” Mr. Moulton ap- 
proved her. “If you can’t win a game without 
peeping at the cards, or slyly moving your ball 
with your toe, then by all means lose the game. 
It’s worse than lost if it’s won by tricks, hey, 
Mary?” 

“I suppose that’s what we feel, sir,” smiled 
Mary, rising to go. 

Mark accompanied her and Win homeward, 
as a matter of course. “Well, I’m sure I hope 
with all my heart your mother will not leave 
you for this lordly chauffeur of yours,” Mark said 
as they sauntered along. “She seems very 
young and merry to settle down here in Vine- 
clad. To be sure you are a great deal younger, 
yet it would seem natural for you to settle down 
here, all three of you. But you belong to Vine- 
clad, whereas your mother seems like a bit broken 
off of another world.” 

“That’s just it, Mark!” Win said. “That’s 
Lynette.” 

“Yes, but gradually, and especially since I 
was burned, she seems to be getting cemented 
on to our world,” Mary said wistfully. 

“The Englishman is lucky to have so much 


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to offer her, if he cares for her,” said Mark. 
Win looked over at him across Mary, surprised 
at the discouraged note in the young voice. 

“Why, Mark, what’s up?” he cried. 

“Nothing. Nothing down, either; as down 
as that sounded,” returned Mark. “But I see 
things as they are, young as I am. Mr. Moul- 
ton is fine, as good to me as a man can be, and 
I’m getting on with the work in a way that sat- 
isfies him — and he is exacting for his beloved 
science! — and fairly to satisfy myself. But 
how shall I ever get on in the world? I’m 
slightly lame; I’m doing underground work, 
though I do love it. If I — if I cared about a 
girl, ever, what would be the use? I’m not un- 
grateful; I surely love my work, but a young 
chap does like to see daylight, or at least a crack 
where it could come in.” 

“There surely is romance in the air, as I told 
Mary to-night,” thought Win, looking sidewise 
at the fair, quiet face beside him, which gave 
no sign whether she had a suspicion of what this 
might mean or not. “Boys are not worrying 
much about the future unless they have seen 
The Girl,” thought Win. “And Mark would 
be blind not to see that Mary was indeed The 
Girl of girls!” 


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281 


“I wouldn’t get impatient, Mark,” he said 
gently. “There’s a lot of time for a boy under 
twenty. Since things have worked so well for 
you thus far, I’d be content to believe they were 
going to work out right in the end.” 

“I’ll try,” said Mark. “I get sort of raging; 
then I’m ashamed of it.” And Win noticed 
that Mary, usually so quick to try to comfort 
every one’s anxieties, did not raise her eyes nor 
speak. 

Mark left his friends at the gate, and Mary 
and Win went around to the side door, and whis- 
tled up the back stairs, fulfilling their contract. 
Jane and Florimel came down to join them, 
looking more ruffled in spirit than when they 
had gone up. Jane was white to the lips, and 
her short upper lip would quiver and draw; her 
eyes had hollows under them and they had re- 
treated into her head in a way they had, as if 
to conceal their colour, as well as expression, when 
they were sorrowful. Florimel, on the con- 
trary, was dark crimson in cheeks and brilliant 
eyed; she looked like an embodied young elec- 
trical storm. 

“I won’t kiss him and call him father, not if 
he is the king!” Florimel declared, stopping 
short at the door, and nearly upsetting Mary’s 


282 HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 

gravity, though she quivered with apprehension 
of what they were to be told on its further side. 
The three girls saw, on entering, the same im- 
passive, perfect-mannered gentleman beside the 
hearth that they had left there. 

Mrs. Garden’s eyes were gentle, her smile 
newly sweet and kind, as Lord Wilfrid arose. 
Then her three beautiful young daughters en- 
tered. She put out her arms to them with a 
new, motherly gesture which she had learned by 
the light of the fire that had nearly cost her 
Mary’s life. 

“A pleasant evening, my dearests? ” she asked. 
That was all, but her voice gave Jane a swift 
glow of hope that sent her to her mother’s clasp. 

They settled themselves beside the fire, which 
Win replenished. 

Obedient to Mrs. Garden’s expressed wish, 
Lord Kelmscourt talked chiefly to Mary, draw- 
ing her out, that he might tell his sister how 
lovely was this eldest child of her friend, whose 
talents had once delighted that other world 
which Lynette Devon had forsaken. After a 
quiet and pleasant hour, in which Mary found 
pleasure, and Jane and Florimel plucked up 
heart, they could not have said why, Lord Kelms- 
court begged to be allowed to say good-night. 


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283 


“I am to spend to-morrow here; Mrs. Gar- 
den has kindly urged it, and I am promised to 
be allowed to drive the car many miles, to see 
as much as I can of this part of your great state. 
Then I go home to England, carrying ineffaceable 
memories of the only American family I know 
in its home, and of these three girls whom, I 
am proud to remember, England may claim a 
share in, as she gave them their mother,” he said. 
The little speech had a formality about it that 
did not prevent its ringing sincere. It also con- 
veyed to the three girls, distinctly, the impres- 
sion of a valedictory. 

When Win had gone with Lord Kelmscourt 
to his room, Mary, Jane, and Florimel turned 
with mute insistence to their mother. They 
did not speak, except through their imploring 
eyes. Mrs. Garden went to them, holding out 
her hands, with her pretty grace, half crying, 
half laughing. 

“You were horribly frightened, weren’t you, 
my treasures?” she cried. “Once I could not 
have believed that I should have refused the 
shelter, the honour of that good man’s love, nor 
the rank and luxury he would give me. But I 
have found out what it means to be a mother, 
my little lassies! I could not be less your 


284 


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mother, could not leave you again, to mount the 
throne! Let me stay close to you always, my 
darlings, for every day I shall love you better 
and grow a better woman in my home. Oh, 
children, when I thought I might lose Mary, 
then I saw, I saw! I couldn’t be Lady Kelms- 
court, dearests, because I want to be nothing 
and nobody on all the earth but just the Garden 
girls’ little madrina! ” 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


“rich with the spoils of nature” 

“It certainly is convenient to be grown up,” 
said Florimel, when the entire family had re- 
turned from bidding Lord Kelmscourt a final 
good-bye at the station. He was gone forever, 
and, inconsistently, the three girls were truly 
sorry. He had been so kind, so self-effacing, 
his trustworthiness was so evident in driving 
the car, and in looking after its occupants, that 
if there had been any way of holding him, while 
at the same time holding him off — from step- 
fatherhood — the Garden girls would have been 
delighted to have added him permanently to 
their lives. 

“It’s quite as convenient to be a little short 
of grown up, often, Mellie. What are you 
thinking of that makes you say that?” asked 
Mary, rapidly divesting herself of her gown, 
and getting into a soft blue lounging gown, as a 
preparation for throwing herself across the foot 
of the bed for an hour’s rest before supper. 

285 


286 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Florimel unbraided her black hair and dropped 
it over the back of her chair, rocking furiously 
to fan it. 

“We’ve been driving and driving, hours, and 
you and Jane and I were miserable, miserable- 
minded, because we were so sorry to think Lord 
Kelmscourt had to go away and be a rejected 
suitor. Rejected suitors are perfectly tragic 
in stories! We could hardly answer when he 
talked to us, and we all acted as if we were babies, 
standing on one foot with our thumbs in our' 
mouths, we were so awkward and embarrassed. 
And here was the rejected suitor driving away, 
as calm as milk, and madrina chatting with him, 
easy and natural! She was not a bit embar- 
rassed; neither was the R. S.! Of course Eng- 
lishmen are supposed to be just like Gibraltar, 
never showing what they feel. But I still think 
it’s great to be grown up. It carries you through 
things. I’d love to be able to refuse to marry 
some one, and then act the next day as if 
he’d dropped in for tea, and I happened to be 
out of it! Not so upset; I’ve seen people much 
more embarrassed when they had company, and 
something to eat was spoiled, than madrina 
was to-day! It’s being grown up, and out in 
society.” 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


287 


Jane stood in the doorway laughing; she, too, 
had on her kimono, and she was wandering 
and combing her hair, after her incorrigible 
habit of dressing on the march. 

You’ll have to see that you change as you 
grow up, Mel, or you’ll never hide your feelings,” 
she advised. “Well, I’m as sorry as I can be 
that nice Lord Kelmscourt couldn’t stay — some 
other way! If only he could have been our 
chauffeur, a chauffeuring friend, or a friendly 
chauffeur, living near enough to spend lots of 
evenings with us, like Mr. and Mrs. Moulton! 
He’s splendid. And the clever little points he 
taught me in driving to-day! You can see he’s 
one of those well-trained, all-around people 
who do everything well. I’m sure he’s very 
fond of madrina; he was so willing to give her 
up” 

“Of all reasons for thinking he liked her a 
lot!” cried Florimel. 

Jane nodded her head hard. “You couldn’t 
tell how unwilling he felt, but the quietly willing 
way he acted, I mean,” she persisted. “A cheap 
little liking might make a row, but a big, deep 
liking would consider madrina, and not make her 
uncomfortable.” 

Mary raised her head, and poked her pillow 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


into a bunch, as she regarded Jane with her 
customary admiration. 

“I wonder if you won’t be a novelist instead 
of a singer or actress, Janie,” she said. “You 
do see things!” 

“Maybe I’ll be a telescope,” said Jane, turn- 
ing on her heel and swinging down the hall, sing- 
ing foolishly : 

“ Jane could see when she'd look , so she wrote a 
great book , 

Jane could see when she'd look , so she wrote a 
great book." 

The three girls were ready for supper before 
their mother, and they went out into the gar- 
den to wait for her. Whenever the Garden 
girls had to wait, or had a few spare moments, 
or had work to do that could be done there, it 
was as natural for them to stroll out into the 
garden paths as it would have been for a bird 
to fly out of an open window. 

Mrs. Garden was not long following them. 
She came running downstairs, all in white, and 
stole up behind Mary, who had not seen her 
coming. “Why so grave, my little grand- 
mother? ” she asked. 

“Was I?” Mary turned to her with a smile 
that was far from grave. “I was wondering 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


289 


whether those hybrid tea roses we planted this 
spring, which are blooming so well over there, 
would really prove hardy and survive the win- 
ter.” 

“Did I ever tell you that the Kelmscourt 
place, Lord Kelmscourt’s splendid old house, 
time of George I, has an acre of nothing but 
roses? Oh, me, it’s wonderful! You really 
know nothing of gardens over here.” Mrs. Gar- 
den dropped her head and sighed wistfully, 
not an unmistakable sigh, but a delicately done 
one, conveying a regret that was repressed, 
struggling to the day. 

Instantly Florimel pounced on her, while 
Mary and Jane exchanged a look of terror. 

“Now you’re sorry!” cried Florimel, her voice 
tragic. “We don’t blame you, but now you’re 
sorry!” She stalked away, misery in her whole 
attitude. Mrs. Garden threw up her head with 
a laugh, her eyes dancing with mischief, swung 
on the toes of her dainty little slippers like a 
dancer, and ran after Florimel. 

“You little gypsy explosive baby!” she cried, 
catching her youngest girl around the shoulders 
and turning her to see her mother’s laughing 
face. “I thought that would tease you, silly 
little zanies! Why, girls, can’t you see how 


290 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


happy I am? I’m as pleased as if I’d found a 
lost treasure chest! I was not obliged to leave 
you, of course, and I didn’t come anywhere near 
going, but I feel as though I had escaped a great 
danger! My lassies, I want you to know, once 
for all, that I’d rather be your mother than any- 
thing else on earth. I’ve said that before, but 
do realize how true it is! And I love the old 
Garden house and the old Garden garden, and 
I’d be horribly jealous for you of any interest 
that would divide me. I want to be yours, en- 
tirely yours ! I’ve found it’s the best thing in all 
the world to be a mother — even a toy-mother! 
Come, hug me!” Mrs. Garden held out her 
arms, laughing, but with the merry eyes that 
called to Mary and Jane, as well as to Florimel, 
shining through moisture on their lashes. 

“Well, Lynette Garden! You bet we’ll hug 
you!” cried Florimel, and no one felt that the 
slangy response was blameworthy this time. 
There seemed to be need of vigorous expression. 

The Garden girls crushed the little white-clad 
figure in a threefold, bearlike embrace. The 
day was won, their mother was won; the last 
uncertainty as to her loving them well enough 
to be happy with them, at the price of the loss of 
her old world of pleasures and admiration, was 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


291 


settled. The strange relationship, in which the 
daughters were almost as much their mother’s 
mother as she was their mother; the protecting, 
petting, playful love they gave her, the admiring, 
dependent, comrade love which she gave them, 
was cemented, assured forever. It was an ex- 
ceedingly happy, radiant Garden family that 
came in to supper when Anne called the four 
young women. 

After supper, in the twilight of the garden, 
as usual, the mother and the girls, with Win — 
and Chum, as always, at Florimel’s feet — sat 
expecting Mr. and Mrs. Moulton. They heard 
Mark’s halting step coming down the street, 
unaccompanied. Mark’s lameness was less visi- 
ble than audible. It swayed his body but 
slightly, but it gave an irregular beat to his 
footfall. 

“Mark is coming without them!” said Mary. 

Mark came in at the side gate and across the 
path to the group. “Thought I’d find you 
here,” he said. “Aren’t you chilly?” 

“Not yet, but we shall be soon,” said Mrs. 
Garden. “It was uncomfortably warm in the 
sunshine to-day, but there’s a chilliness creeping 
into the evening.” 

“September,” suggested Mark. “Summer’s 


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HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


over; though it takes the sun awhile to find it 
out, the stars know it. I’ve a good deal to tell 
you. May I bring a chair?” 

“With my help, Markums,” said Win, rising 
to take one arm of the garden chair which Mark 
went over to fetch. 

“Oh, why not go in at once? We shall only 
have to move after Mark gets under way with 
his story,” said Florimel, who hated to be inter- 
rupted when she was interested. 

“No; let’s cling to every possible moment of 
our last garden evenings this year!” cried Jane, 
and Mark dropped into the chair which Win 
considerately halted near Mary. 

“I don’t know how to tell you,” said Mark, 
as they all looked at him, waiting for him to be- 
gin. “I had a birthday to-day.” 

“And never told us!” Jane reproached him. 

“I don’t see how we happened not to have 
found out your date. We always keep the 
birthdays; we love to. Why didn’t you let us 
know, Mark?” Mary exclaimed. 

“Because you’d have bought me one of those 
girl-chosen neckties no fellow ever wants to 
wear, Mary,” Mark teased her. 

“Are you nineteen to-day, Mark?” asked Mrs. 
Garden. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


293 


“That’s all, Mrs. Garden, but don’t you think 
I’m pretty far along for my age?” asked Mark. 
“Mr. and Mrs. Moulton had found out my 
birthday date some time ago. Dear Garden 
blossoms, they’ve given me a present.” The boy 
stopped short; evidently he was profoundly moved. 

“Oh, Mark, what?” cried Mary, leaning for- 
ward, catching his excitement. 

“A present with a condition attached to it, 
but such a condition!” Mark resumed. “They 
have asked me to promise to devote my life to 
carrying on Mr. Moulton’s work; with him, while 
he lives, for him after he is dead. Mr. Moulton 
thinks that I shall be competent to do this, and 
he has asked me to undertake it. It’s a great 
thing — both ways. A great thing to do and a 
great opportunity for me.” Again Mark paused. 

“It’s big, old Mark!” said Win. “But the 
present in return? ” 

“If I will accept Mr. Moulton’s trust in me 
and devote my life to his work, he — they, his 
wife and he — will adopt me legally, not taking 
their name, you know, but as their heir. They’ll 
make me their son. It’s — it’s awful!” Mark 
choked, and his head went down on the back of 
his chair, to which he turned his face, utterly 
unable to command himself any longer. 


294 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“Mark, dear, it’s not awful; it’s beautiful! 
Beautiful both ways!” cried Jane. 

“I don’t know whether I’m more glad for you 
qr for the dear Moultons,” said Mary. 

“You don’t have to be glad separately; it’s 
all one,” said Florimel wisely. 

“Old chap, I’m too glad to say how glad!” 
cried Win, slapping Mark on the back with such 
vigour that it had a tonic effect. 

Mrs. Garden had not spoken, but the touch 
of her hand on Mark’s shoulder was eloquent 
of her rejoicing sympathy. 

Mark faced them all again, wiping his eyes, 
unashamed. “I didn’t cry when I was down 
and out,” he said. “A fellow doesn’t feel so 
much like crying when he’s got his teeth set, 
and he’s standing things. But this — this heav- 
enly kindness gets me.” 

“It would any one,” said Mary. “But it 
isn’t all kindness, Mark. Mr. Moulton was 
anxious, troubled when he could not see any one 
who would be likely to finish what he had begun; 
you know what that means to a scientist, for 
you are one yourself, in your younger way. 
And Mrs. Moulton has been lonely. I can see 
that she leans on you as much, in her way, as 
her husband does for the botanical work. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


295 


They’re very fond of you and this is just as good 
for them as for you — not that I want to belittle 
what they do for you, but it wouldn’t be right 
for you to think of it as in the least a charity.” 

“I don’t, Mary; I see it just as you do,” said 
Mark. “But you can’t understand, not even 
you people who are so quick to understand things, 
what it means to belong. My father and I were 
chums. When he died it wasn’t so much that 
I was left poor, when I had supposed we were 
well off, but the relatives I had rather did me, 
and I didn’t belong to a soul. Take a dog; it 
isn’t enough to feed him. A good dog craves a 
master, he’s got to belong to some one. I knew 
a lost dog once that some people fed; he wasn’t 
hungry, but he was heart-broken till he was 
adopted by some one who loved him. In a week 
you wouldn’t have known him; chirked right 
up, belonged again, you see. Now if a dog feels 
that, so does a boy. You’ve all been like old 
friends to me, the Moultons couldn’t have been 
better, but I didn’t belong to any one. Mr. and 
Mrs. Moulton told me about this only a little 
while ago, at supper time, but I know it’s mak- 
ing me over already. Oh, my soul, what a 
birthday present!” 

“You’re going to accept the conditions?” 


296 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


hinted Mrs. Garden, with her little look of mis- 
chief. 

“Accept them! I don’t believe I am; I 
think they simply swallow me up. I would 
rather do something of the sort Mr. Moulton is 
doing than be Romulus and Remus and found 
Rome! Think of it! I used to intend to go to 
college, and then devote my life to science, but 
father was killed in the fire and the whole game 
was up, college and affording to work at a science — 
botany — and all! And then I wandered into 
Vineclad, looking for a bookkeeper’s job which 
I heard was here, and walked right into the ful- 
filment of my ambition! Talk about our lives 
being laid out for us! Did you ever know any- 
thing like it? And Mr. and Mrs. Moulton’s 
adopted son! The finest people! And every- 
thing on earth I could desire made possible, 
just when no one could have seen a chance for 
me!” Mark’s eyes as they rested on Mary were 
so alight that hers fell. 

“Lucky isn’t the only one lucky,” said Flori- 
mel, rising with Lucky in her arms; the cat al- 
ways found her after a while and cuddled down 
in her lap wherever she was seated. Florimel 
held him close to Mark’s face. “Kiss him and 
tell him you and he are twin brothers in lucki- 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


297 

ness! But don’t you forget, Mark Walpole, 
that Florimel Garden made you come home with 
her that day, you and Chum, both.” 

“Indeed I’ll not forget it, Miss Blackbird,” 
said Mark. “But I won’t kiss Lucky; I’ll shake 
his paw instead. We are triplets in luck, Lucky, 
Chum, and I! And it is the cold fact that the 
littlest Garden girl was our mascot, all three of us.” 

“The littlest Garden girl can be some good, 
if she is only the gypsy and the blackbird, danc- 
ing and whistling,” said Florimel with dignity. 
“Here come Mr. and Mrs. Moulton. We’d 
better go in; Mrs. Moulton can’t sit out so late, 
now.” 

“They let me come ahead of them to skim my 
own cream,” said Mark. “Bless their splendid 
old hearts! I hope I’ll never fail them.” 

“Sons that fail usually walk into failure. 
You won’t fail them, Mark,” said Mrs. Garden, 
rising and helplessly trying to draw her scarf 
around her, to which end her three girls, Win, 
and Mark jumped to help her. 

The Gardens and Mark met Mr. and Mrs. 
Moulton at the steps. Mr. Moulton smiled at 
Mary with the peculiar tenderness his eyes held 
for her, mingled with a quizzical look that was 


new. 


£98 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“How do you like my son Mark? This is 
his first birthday; it was Mark Walpole’s nine- 
teenth birthday, Marygold,” he said. 

“Dear Mr. Moulton, we never, never shall be 
able to say how glad we all are; as glad as we 
can be for you, too,” said Mary, seizing her 
guardian by both hands. 

“Ah, then I can see that you like my son 
Mark, for I’m sure you would not rejoice if I 
had a son whom you disapproved,” returned 
Mr. Moulton, swinging both of Mary’s arms by 
the extended hands, and ending by laying her 
hands on his shoulders while he kissed her cheek. 

“I’ve liked Mark from the first time I saw 
him,” said Mrs. Moulton, temperately, but 
with a look at Mark that made her words sound 
warmer than their registered temperature. 
“When he came over from your house to talk 
to Mr. Moulton, he turned back to straighten 
a rug, and he helped me to catch my canary, 
which had flown out of his cage; he handled the 
little creature gently and wooed him with soft 
notes. There’s a boy, I said to myself, who is 
orderly; witness the rug. Gentle, patient; wit- 
ness the bird. Kind and respectful; witness 
his bothering about the concerns of a woman of 
my age. I decided on the spot that Mark was a 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


299 


good boy; of course it was easy to see that he was 
well-bred. I’ve never altered my opinion.” 

Mark looked at her, rosy red even to the tips 
of his ears. He went up to her with an entirely 
new freedom and affection of manner. 

“See here, Mother Moulton,” he said. “You 
mustn’t praise me to total strangers!” 

It was not hard to see that Mrs. Moulton 
was delighted by this little speech. Not less 
than Mark she felt — the childless woman in a 
happy home, and with a husband such as few 
women can boast — that it was a great deal “ to be- 
long,” to belong in a motherly way, to a fine boy. 

“I’ve told Mark that I will not ask him to 
take my name,” said Mr. Moulton. “He is to 
be my son, inheriting my property and my work, 
fulfilling what I cannot finish. But he loved his 
father, and I should not wish to supplant him, 
even if I could, which would be impossible non- 
sense to discuss with a boy worth his salt. But 
as we all know that when ‘The Study of the 
Flora of New York’ is published, long after I am 
dead, it will be under my name and Mark’s, as 
joint authors — I believe I’d be glad if he would 
consent to become Mark Moulton Walpole. 
Would you object, Mark? Mary, urge my re- 
quest.” 


300 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“It needs no urging, sir,” said Mark. “I’d 
be glad to take your name. There’s no way I 
can express fully how much I owe you, nor how 
I’m yours. That goes a little toward doing it.” 

“As to owing, that’s nonsense. We serve one 
another, we three members of the Moulton 
family. It’s not nonsense to feel that you belong 
to us beyond verbal labelling. It may be non- 
sense, but it is true, that I’d like my name to be 
incorporated with yours, so that when the book 
appears, compiled by Austin Moulton and Mark 
Moulton Walpole, those who see it will recog- 
nize you as my kin. As you surely are, my boy, 
though you did not spring from my stock. We 
are of the same botanical genus — and genius! — 
at least. Much obliged for your instant con- 
sent to grafting my name on yours. Come 
home, Mark; Mrs. Moulton is waiting.” Mr. 
Moulton laid his hand on Mark’s shoulder and 
the elder man and the younger one looked into 
each other’s eyes with a smile that said every- 
thing. 

The Garden girls, Mrs. Garden, and Win 
went with them to the gate. Florimel chased 
Mark with the intention of boxing his ears 
twenty times, the birthday chastisement, with 
“one to grow on.” She was fleet-footed, but 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


301 


Mark out-dodged her. Florimel hung, breath- 
less and defeated, on the gate watching the 
Moulton party down the road. Mrs. Garden, 
Mary, Jane, and Win waved their hands just as 
wildly as Florimel did, till the three visitors 
were out of sight. Then Florimel stepped off of 
the gate and voiced the sentiments of her family 
in her own way. 

“ Isn’t it hallelujahfied? Makes you want 
to sob your cheers, you’re so stirred-up glad!” 
she said. 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


“and FEEL THAT I AM HAPPIER THAN I KNOW” 

The Garden girls had always kept Garden 
Day, at least since they had been old enough to 
devise it. It was the ingathering feast of their 
garden, the day when the dahlia, gladiola, and 
other summer bulbs were taken up, and the 
annual additions to the tulips, daffodils, nar- 
cissi, and crocuses were made. When the deli- 
cate plants which were worth saving were potted 
to be housed, the autumn seeds sown for spring 
growing, the pansies put to bed under leaves and 
straw, the roses laid down and covered, the 
stalks of vines straw-wound, and plants needing 
protection straw-thatched. No gardener was 
allowed to perform these tasks alone. Mary, 
Jane, and Florimel had insisted, from the time 
that the older two were small girls, and Florime 
was not much more than a baby, on bidding thei: 
garden this autumnal farewell. For, thougl 
they would wander through its paths during th< 
warm days which stray into November, and. 



302 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


303 


even in the winter, spend hours out of doors, 
this day marked the formal closing of the gar- 
den. They observed this feast on the 30th of 
October, when the weather allowed, or when it 
did not fall on a Sunday; in case of storm, or 
when the day came on Sunday, the garden day 
was kept on November 2d. 

“It should be either the eve of the eve of All- 
hallow, or on All Souls’ Day,” Mary had de- 
cided when they were discussing the permanent 
date of their observance. “We can’t have it on 
Halloween, because there is likely to be some- 
thing going on that we’d want to take part in. 
But we ought to keep our garden day near to All 
Saints’, or else right on All Souls’ Day. Those 
are harvest days, you see: the ingathering of 
beautiful characters. I think we ought to keep 
our beautiful flowers’ day at that time.” 

“You nice Mary!” Jane endorsed her. “And 
let’s call it Slumber Day, because we tuck all 
our flowers up in their beds then.” 

Thus Slumber Day became a settled obser- 
vance with the Gardens, and around it many 
little customs gathered, pleasant little fanciful 
things which, once done, seemed good to the 
girls and were noted for repetition. 

“This year there are four girls instead of 


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three, little madrina!” said Mary. “You mustn’t 
work and get tired — we get so tired on this 
day we can hardly eat our supper! But you 
must help on Slumber Day, or it won’t seem 
right. We forgot to tell you about the uni- 
form! Isn’t that too bad! Of course some- 
thing else will answer.” 

“Anne told me about it; mine is ready,” Mrs. 
Garden said, and she looked delighted to be 
able to surprise her girls with this answer. 
“Breakfast at seven on that day, Anne says. 
I wonder whether I can get ready so early! I 
shall, whether I can or not!” Mrs. Garden 
hastily forestalled Mary’s coming suggestion 
that the hour be made later for her benefit. 

She was as good as her word. At ten minutes 
to seven she ran downstairs, dressed in the Slum- 
ber Day uniform, a dark-blue, plain gingham, 
short skirt, plain shirt waist, tan gingham col- 
lar and cuffs — selected because it was so near 
loam colour — an enamel cloth apron, long enough 
to kneel on, rubber gloves, and a cap of the dark- 
blue gingham, made like a dusting cap, but each 
one ornamented with a bright-green cotton 
wing, wired so that it stood straight and defi- 
ant and gave a touch of festivity to the otherwise 
sternly practical costume. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


305 


“Doesn’t she look dear in that?” cried Flori- 
mel, rushing over to snatch her mother off her 
feet in an enthusiastic salute. 

“I wonder why it is, but if any one really is 
pretty and stylish she looks better in working 
clothes than she does dressed up! Mary and I 
would rather have had a red wing in our cap, but 
they had to be alike, and Jane isn’t quite as 
pretty in red as she is in other things.” 

Jane laughed. “Pussy-cat way of putting it, 
Mel, creeping on tippy-toes! Fancy bright red 
on my hair ! ” she cried. 

“How nice, how pretty you all look — well, yes; 
I suppose I might say we all look, since I’m 
dressed like you, but I can’t see the effect of the 
fourth uniform,” Mrs. Garden corrected herself, 
seeing Florimel’s protest coming. “You look like 
a trio costumed for something in light opera.” 

“The Digger Maidens,” suggested Win. “I’ve 
got to go to the office this morning, as I told you, 
but I promise to help you all the afternoon. So 
long, till then.” He went off whistling. Jane 
turned from the window with a wave of her hand 
to Win, who chanced to look back. 

“I think Win is as nice as a boy can be. He’s 
so indifferent about it, too; doesn’t seem to 
think he’s good looking and clever, and he 


306 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


couldn’t be .kinder, nor more truthful and 
straight. Sometimes he strikes me all over 
again, as if I’d just met him! He’s a splendid 
boy, honestly,” she said. 

“When I was here before, I mean when I first 
came here, your father used to say that Win would 
grow up to be the kind of man that never seems 
to do anything in particular, but which quietly 
fills a big place in the community. Win was but 
a little lad then, yet his half-brother was perfectly 
right about him. We all think that a great man is 
one with great talents, or who achieves great 
deeds, but, after all, if one who has a great heart, 
a great conscience, great truth, great steadfast- 
ness, great loyalty, isn’t a great man, I wonder 
who is? And Win has all these things,” said 
Mrs. Garden. 

“Why, madrina, how nice!” cried Mary, de- 
lighted. “I never had the least idea that you 
cared so much about Win.” 

“Win didn’t care so much about me, Mary, 
when I came home,” said Mrs. Garden, with 
a smile. “He had been devoted to me when I 
lived here, but he could not forgive me for leav- 
ing you for my beloved work in the world. I 
don’t blame him; he could not understand what 
slight excuse there was for it. I see now that its 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


307 


principal justification was that I was not pre- 
pared to bring you up; I had to learn. But 
now Win is forgiving me, and, I hope, getting 
fonder of me again.” 

“Little madrina, you are growing up, my 
child! You are almost as old as Jane, some- 
times, and we all know how profoundly old 
Jane is, in her thoughtful mining into things! 
Come along, little Garden girls, little Lynette, 
Janie, Florimel! We must begin our Slumber 
Day ceremonies!” cried Mary. 

Arming themselves with a trowel apiece, the 
Garden girls, to follow Mary’s example and 
counting Mrs. Garden as one of them, went out 
of the house. They marched to the great ox- 
heart cherry tree which gave its shade to one 
corner of the grassy end of the garden where the 
seats stood, and which gave its delicious fruit 
abundantly, late in June, to the Gardens and to 
their neighbours. Here the girls paused. “We 
first sing the lullaby Slumber Day, you know,” 
Florimel explained to her mother. 

Under the tree, with trowels waving in a 
cradle motion, the girls sang “ Kiicken’s Lullaby.” 
It was really pleasing in effect; Florimel sang 
acceptably, Jane’s voice was extraordinary, and 
Mary’s alto was sweet and deep. 


308 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


“We are sorry we have not started in with an- 
other lullaby, but we sang this long ago, when we 
didn’t know any other,” said Florimel apologeti- 
cally in response to her mother’s praise. “That’s 
always our opening hymn.” 

The forenoon passed in work that was solid, 
although varied by fantastic ceremonies. As, 
for instance, “The Gladiola Gladness” was a tri- 
umphant dance in which the gladiola bulbs were 
borne aloft in a basket, in a whirling dance, cele- 
brating their past blossoming. 

“Jane does this because we think she’s most 
like a gladiolus, thin and reddish and brilliant,” 
Florimel explained. 

Mary had the ceremony of the pansy cover- 
ing. She covered them with leaves and made 
mysterious passes over their visible little forms. 

“ Pansies for thought , sleep as you ought , 
Sleep , hut awake for your true lover's sake,” 

Mary repeated as she did this; it was the incan- 
tation of her childhood. 

Florimel took up the dahlias. The girls had 
early recognized their own types, and had dis- 
tributed tasks accordingly. Florimel’s dark, 
vigorous beauty was suited to dahlias as well 
as Mary’s quiet loveliness harmonized with 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


309 


pansies. With the dahlia bulbs Florimel exe- 
cuted a solo march, formal steps and courtly 
gestures its ritual. 

So the morning went on, filled with work, but 
work brightened to play, and elevated close to 
poetry by all sorts of curious fancies. Mary, 
Jane, and Florimel were serious, almost reverent 
in their fantastic ceremonies. Though they 
were almost grown up, the association of these 
things with childish faith made the day and its 
events to them something between fantasy and 
reality. 

Mrs. Garden watched them, participating in 
what they did, as far as she was able, with the 
keenest enjoyment and no less wonder. This 
curious day brought her into touch with her 
children’s lost childhood. She realized what 
clever little beings they had been, developing 
in their own way, set apart by their father’s 
theories of education. The pang with which she 
realized this, her pride in them and regret for 
the days in which she had been separated from 
them, days never to be recovered, showed her 
how far she had travelled from the old Lynette 
Devon, whose joy had been the public; how far 
toward Lynette Garden, whose increasing joy was 
in being her beautiful and gifted children’s mother. 


310 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Joel Bell was an amazed witness of the Slum- 
ber Day ceremonies. What they represented 
he could not imagine; why “great girls like these 
should carry on so” he could still less imagine. 
He wheeled barrowloads of straw and leaves, 
dug and tied and trenched, with unvarying 
gravity, but his pitying disapproval peeped 
forth. 

Noon afforded the first moment when conver- 
sation was possible. One of the unwritten 
laws of Slumber Day was that no talking was 
allowed; participants in ceremonies are not sup- 
posed to converse while they are going on. Joel 
availed himself of this interlude. 

“Say, Mis’ Garden,” he began, “about that 
nus’ry you was thinkin’ of foundin’. Seem’s if 
it couldn’t hardly be, ’thout they was a widder, 
or some such woman, ready to let the children 
be dumped with her. Who’d look after ’em?” 

“We were saying just that, Bell,” said Mrs. 
Garden. “ My daughters thought we could find 
such a person, but so far none has been sug- 
gested. Do you know one?” 

Joel Bell shook his head. “Fact, I don’t,” 
he said. “I spoke to one woman, but she quick 
showed she thought I meant her to take Mis’ 
Bell’s place, my wife’s, you know, or else she 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


311 


meant to take it. I didn’t wait to find out 
which; either way my safety laid in flight, an’ I 
flew.” 

In spite of themselves the girls burst out 
laughing at this. 

“Don’t you laugh, girls,” said Joel, with 
deeper seriousness. “There’s been many a un- 
fort ’nate man married before this because he 
hadn’t the ready money, nor yet the courage 
to go to law to prove he had no notion of takin’ 
a woman who ran him down like a hunted deer. 
It’s a dreadful thing when a woman that’s at 
all set picks out some man to marry him! 
Matrimony is seriouser, anyway, than girls like 
you thinks, an’ I believe it’s the dooty of older 
folks to try to make the younger generation 
sense that.” 

Mrs. Garden could never accommodate herself 
to the American freedom of speech on the part 
of those whom she employed. “Such awfully 
bad manners!” she said in her most English 
accent, when her disapproval was not more se- 
vere. Now she turned toward the house. “Anne 
must have called us, my dears,” she said. 
“Very well, Bell; we will try to find a matron 
for our Day Nursery.” 

At the house Anne met them. “I called, 


312 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


but you did not hear, Mrs. Garden,” she said. 
“Lunch is nearly ready. Jane, Florimel, there 
is the strangest person waiting to see you. 
She came some twenty minutes ago, but would 
not let me disturb you. She would not give 
her name. She said she wanted to see one of the 
Garden girls, ‘the one with red hair,’ she said, or a 
younger one with black hair, but the red-haired 
one she would rather see. She is fearfully 
frowsy; light hair, I truly think it is bleached, 
but maybe not. She is in mourning, yet she 
has on a good deal of queer jewellery and a white 
voile waist, all covered with coarse machine 
embroidery. She is a queer person, Jane, alto- 
gether. What can she want of you?” 

“I’ve no idea, Anne; can’t imagine who she is,” 
Jane began, but Florimel said: 

“I can! It’s Miss Alyssa Aldine, and some- 
body’s died.” 

“Oh, Florimel!” Jane remonstrated. She did 
not like to remember that she had sought Miss 
Aldine — Mrs. Peter Mi vie— to ask advice as to 
her career. Nevertheless, Jane hastened to the 
library, not waiting to alter her costume, in- 
stantly sure that Florimel was right, and that it 
was Miss Aldine whom she should find waiting 
for her. 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


313 


Florimel was right. Miss Aldine, quite as 
blowsy in her mourning as she had been in her 
pink wrapper, arose to meet Jane as she entered, 
followed close by Florimel. 

“How are you, my dears?” she said. “I 
don’t suppose you remember me.” 

“Surely we do,” said Jane, putting out her 
hand with a sudden cordiality. She saw that 
Mrs. Mivle looked a great deal older, and sad 
and worn, and, Jane-like, was moved to wel- 
come her. “Surely we remember you, Mrs. 
Mivle. You were very nice to me when I was 
so silly as to bother you.” 

“No trouble at all,” said Mrs. Mivle, tears 
springing to her eyes. “You were an awfully 
pretty pair to drop into a body’s room so unex- 
pected. It does a body good to see girls like 
you. And now you don’t call me Miss Aldine, 
but you give me my sainted Petey’s name. I 
suppose you saw by the papers my loss?” 

“No, we haven’t seen,” said Jane, feeling her 
way. “I noticed you were in mourning. It 
isn’t — you don’t mean ” 

“Yes, I do!” sobbed Mrs. Mivle. “My 
blessed Petey took sick, and before we knew he 
was more’n kind of off his feed, you might say, 
he was past all hope — appendicitis! Ain’t it 


314 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


awful? Sydney Fleming — you remember, his 
stage name, that was? — was simply great in the 
lead, could do anything. We acted together 
like we were made for it. And it’s my belief 
we were. Things come out like that in this 
world, once in a while; folks sent into it to be 
with certain other folks, for work and pleasure. 
And say, we were happy, honest ! Petey and me 
got on when we was in private life just like the 
leading lady and her support does in the slickest 
plays. It’s broke me up something fierce to 
lose him. See, I’m wearing his ring! I won’t 
part with it while I can hold it, but I’m down on 
my luck. Comp’ny burst up, couldn’t get a 
leading man fit to take Pete’s place, I was all in ; 
couldn’t do justice to my repertoire, we played to 
poor houses, manager was up against it; sorry 
for me, sorry Pete died, but sorry for himself 
when he run behind. He had to shut down, 
and it took pretty much every cent I had to 
get home; we was playin’ the State of Wash- 
ington when the end come. So I don’t know 
how long I’ll be keeping poor blessed Petey ’s 
ring.” 

The poor creature, kind and honest, though 
grotesque and slangy, pulled off her shabby glove 
and displayed the huge diamond, of yellowish 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 315 

cast, which Jane and Florimel remembered on 
her lost “Petey’s” hand. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” murmured Jane. “I’m 
truly sorry. Not that it does you any good. 
What will you do? ” 

“My dear, that’s exactly what I’ve come to 
ask you,” returned Mrs. Mivle earnestly. “You 
come once to ask my advice. Says I to myself, 
I believe I’ll go hunt up that little handsome red- 
haired girl, and her little beauty black-haired 
sister, and ask them to find me a job. I haven’t 
one friend outside the perfession. I’ve gotter 
go to work at some ordinary job. My acting 
days are over. Not an act left in me; haven’t 
the heart. Do you suppose I could act Lady 
of Lyons with another playing Claude Melnotte 
in Petey’s place? Not on your life! Do you 
think there’d be anything for me to do here in 
Vineclad? There often is work, and few to do 
it, in one-night-stand kind of towns — I beg your 
pardon! It’s a real nice place, but you’ve got 
to admit it’s small and slow! You can ask any 
one about me. There isn’t a thing to be said 
of me I wouldn’t just as lieves as not was said. 
I’m honest, if I do say it, and I’m good natured. 
Pete always said any one had a cinch keeping his 
temper living with me. I’d do anything I could 


316 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


do; no pride left in me. All my pride was per- 
fesh’nal, and, as I say, my acting days is over, 
with Petey’s life. Get me a job at anything, 
there’s a dear child! I’ll do my best, though, to 
tell the truth, I wouldn’t advise any one to get 
me to cook. Petey used to say: ‘Nettie,’ he’d 
say, ‘the quality of mercy is not strained; neither 
is your soup.’ Oh, my Petey! Always like 
that, jokin’, and witty, and great, simply great ! ” 
Peter’s widow gulped painfully. There was 
no doubt that her grief was profound. 

“You wouldn’t care to look after children all 
day, would you?” asked Jane. “We have a 
charity we are starting here. It began in a sort 
of play; we began it, my other sister and I, but 
it is going to be a real charity, and go on far and 
long, we hope. We’ll tell you about it. But 
you must have lunch with us. Please excuse me 
a moment, while I tell my mother and sister you 
are here, and then we’ll have lunch. Why, I 
forgot! Florimel, please take Mrs. Mivle up to 
my room and let her cool her face and hands with 
fresh water. I know one doesn’t care to eat 
after one has been talking fast and feeling sad. 
You musn’t say a word, Mrs. Mivle! As you 
told me about my visit to you: it isn’t any 
trouble!” Jane ran away, and, as rapidly as she 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


317 


could, prepared her mother and Mary for what 
they were to meet. Mary apprehended the 
situation quicker, having already known of the 
former Miss Aldine. But after Mrs. Garden 
understood, she was as ready as her girls were 
to befriend this unfortunate one, who stood on 
the lowest rung of the ladder of fame, on which, 
and in another and higher form of dramatic art, 
Lynette Devoffis little feet had once balanced. 

Mrs. Mi vie was completely overcome by the 
kindness which she received. Before lunch was 
over Mrs. Mi vie had been offered and had ac- 
cepted the post of matron of the Day Nursery. 
It was arranged that she was to return to New 
York, where she had left her slender belongings, 
and fetch them to Vineclad at once. She went 
away immediately after lunch in the station car- 
riage summoned for her, tearfully grateful, re- 
lieved, and nearer happy than had seemed pos- 
sible to her ever to be again. 

The Gardens and Anne watched her away, 
amazed at this sudden solution of a difficulty. 
They were not a little pleased that the Day 
Nursery was proving its right to exist, though it 
had been begun with light-hearted indifference, 
by doing a great service for a lonely woman, 
whose merit was so overlaid with misleading ex- 


318 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


ternals that it was hard to see what could have 
become of her without its refuge. 

“And I know she’ll make the babies happier 
than almost any one else in all the world could!” 
said Jane, as if she were answering some one, 
though no one had made a comment. 

“She’s very good indeed, kind and honest,” 
said Anne Kennington, who was keen to judge. 
“I’m sure she’ll make every child that comes 
near her quite wild over her, when she begins 
singing songs to them and amusing them; you can 
see she’s that sort ! But, my heart, Mrs. Garden, 
dear, what slang they’ll learn from her!” 

“Oh, no, Anne, perhaps not. We’ll try to get 
her to talk and dress less picturesquely,” said 
Mrs. Garden, who had whole-heartedly espoused 
the dethroned leading lady’s cause. 

The afternoon ceremonies of Slumber Day 
were resumed and carried to their end. Win 
came home, as he had promised, to take part in 
the finale. He brought Mark with him; they 
had to be told of the singular guest and her 
prospective office, in spite of the rule against in- 
terrupting the routine of Slumber Day by con- 
versation. 

Joel Bell listened to the tale with, literally, 
open mouth. “Well, how little you can tell 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


319 


what’s around the corner before you turn it!” 
he said. “To think you’ve been the means of 
givin’ a sorrowful lady, an’ a lady without a way 
to git her bread, both comfort an’ bread an’ jam, 
so to speak!” 

“Everything is done; the Slumber Day cere- 
monies are over,” announced Mary at last. 
“We have put the garden to sleep till another 
spring. Now our closing rite, then for supper! 
Mark, you may take part in it. We each in turn 
bid our garden sleep well till next year, and then 
we tell it what has been the best gift we have 
had this year, and ask it to make the gift grow 
and blossom next year. Florimel first; we be- 
gin at the youngest.” 

“No, Chum and Lucky first!” laughed Flori- 
mel, and she held the cat’s, and then the dog’s, 
head close to the ground, under the sun dial, 
where this last event always took place. 

“Good-night, sweet garden, our best friend. 
My best gift has been my home. Keep it and 
increase it another year for me,” she said in turn, 
for each. Then when she released them, Lucky 
ran up the lilac bush, and sat there, and Chum 
ran around and around the grass, tail out and 
mouth stretched, laughing, taking it all as a 
frolic. 


320 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


Florimel, Jane, and Mary said the same thing: 

“ Good-night, sweet garden, our best friend; 
rest well and waken refreshed. My best gift 
has been my mother. Keep her for me, and in- 
crease her health and happiness next year.” 

“Good-night, old garden, true friend,” said 
Win. “My best gift this year” — he hesitated — 
“has been hope and greater happiness. Fruc- 
tify both for me next year.” 

' Mark bent over the sod. 

“Good-night, new-old friend, noble garden,” 
he said. “My best gift this year has been 
through the Gardens — home, affection, hope. 
Keep my gifts for me, and let them grow great 
another year.” 

Mrs. Garden bowed low, her hand upon the 
sun dial. 

“Good-night, sweet garden, patient friend. 
My best gift was won coming back to thee. 
My best gift this year, and for all years, is my 
children. Guard their health, and help me keep 
them, the flower of your soil, forever.” 

She straightened herself and looked around. 
Mary’s deep blue eyes, Jane’s golden ones 
Florimel’s glowing black ones smiled at her. 

“ My Garden blossoms,” she cried. “ My best 
gift, truly, is that I’ve learned to be your mother ! ” 


HOLLYHOCK HOUSE 


321 


Mary turned toward the house, a hand on her 
mother’s shoulder, the other on Jane’s arm. 
Florimel, behind them, encircled her mother with 
her hands on her sisters’ shoulders. 

“Now we are all going from our happy, put- 
to-bed garden into our happy, waking house! 
Come, boys, both!” Mary said. 

“We’re so blessed that we can’t quite know 
how happy we are. Isn’t that beautiful? To 
know we’re happier than we can know we are?” 
said Jane. 

“ I wonder if we aren’t the very luckiest girls in 
the world ? ’ ’ said Florimel . “I wonder if we could 
call our garden fairies, and ask them who were 
the happiest girls in the world, what they’d 
say?” 

And from the steps, where she stood in the set- 
ting sun, came Anne’s voice calling, like an answer: 

“ Garden girls ! Garden girls ! ” 


THE END 


THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 







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